First up, I wanted to add an impromtu "steal this pitch" to all you indie filmmakers and fans out there. This week on It's Always Sunny, the gang pitched what could be possibly the best independent film ever. Please make "Crime Stinks: The Smell of Penetration" happen!

Diagnosis Death:
This supernatural horror flick is made up of all our favorite Flight of the Conchords characters, including Murray. It's a mix of shock and laughs, but from the look of this new clip, it's mostly laughs. The DVD will be out December 29th.

Plus Bloody Disgusting has a clip, below, where Murray makes a cameo!

A supernatural force brings together two lost souls undergoing radical treatment at an experimental drug-testing facility, but when the facility is locked down for the weekend and the drugs take effect, the human guinea pigs experience sinister hallucinations pointing to a horrific double murder.

Unsure of where reality stops, the apparitions become more and more threatening until the only way to leave the facility alive is to solve this haunting secret.

Black Lightning:
Timur Bekmambetov's latest trailer for his high flying car adventure movie is geared towards the ladies! Check out this slick new chitty-chitty-bang-bang that helps seduce the womens. Plus a translated older trailer.

And, because I know a few of you were asking, here's the older Black Lightning trailer with subtitles:

Telepathy:
Quiet Earth pointed out Lesley Manning latest endeavor, and just the description gives us chills...

A pair of identical twins are separated by Russian scientists to determine if they can communicate with each other while one is kept on earth and the other is launched into space.

As someone who firmly believed she had a twin and was switched at birth, much to the dismay of her parents, this movie freaks me out. You may remember Manning from the fake series that tricked a few souls titled Ghostwatch. Well she and her Ghostwatch buddy Stephen Volk, came up with this script and it's staring Kevin McKidd as the twins. I'm already sold, enjoy.

IEP:
It wouldn't be a Cult weekend without a child with wings. Check out the full trailer for the Dutch film, IEP, the story about a little baby bird girl who was taken in by a kindly old couple. But when she gets older, she tries to fly South for the winter, oh uh! Do not miss this, the baby bird puppet is hilarious, and the little girl is adorable.

First of all, there haven't been very many biotech apocalypse flicks at all, even though genetic engineering and other genome/proteome-based weirdness are freaking everybody out in the pop science media. Possibly 28 Days Later is the iconic example of a biotech apocalypse, since it's a human-made virus that unleashes the zombie hoardes. But honestly, we can do better than plagues - we've all seen those before. Besides, the upcoming World War Z movie is probably going to hold the whole plague subgenre hostage to its awesomeness next year.

So what would have to happen to produce a really great biotech apocalypse that wasn't just a virus scare with zombies that made us all think disappointedly of I Am Legend?

First of all, the biotech armageddon would have to affect the entire biosphere, not just humans. When it comes to imagining this scenario I always think of Kathleen Ann Goonan's Jazz Quintet novels, which begin with Queen City Jazz. She creates a future where many people move into biotech cities whose entire infrastructure is mutable and organic - genetically-engineered bees keep the cities "growing" by fertilizing the buildings, which are actually giant wildflowers. The problem comes when the city itself is infested with a virus that causes its entire fabric to remake itself to resemble stories from files stored in the city's library. What if your city decided that it wanted to be a film noir Paris, and then reprogrammed every person and building to emulate that (fictional) place?

If you wanted to go even weirder, visit the scenarios that Rudy Rucker comes up with in Hylozoic, where every object on the planet becomes sentient. Suddenly you are having an emotional relationship with your telephone, which has a lot of opinions about how you've abused it in the past.

I'm not saying we need movie versions of these books, though that might be nice if done by the right people. What we need is for mainstream media to catch up to what is happening in literature and in the lab.

Though I wasn't entirely crazy about Minority Report, one thing that film got right was its emphasis on believable technology. The filmmakers went to MIT, checked out labs where futuristic computer interfaces and biotech are being invented, and incorporated them into the film. I'd love to see the movie that got made after some filmmakers spent some time hanging out at the Department of Energy's Genome Research Institute, or the Max Planck Institute in Europe - or, hell, how about just reading even one essay by Drew Endy? In fact, you don't have to read - you can just watch him talk about synthetic biology here:

If researchers can genetically-engineer bacteria whose behavior changes with a flash of light, or build poplars that contain termite genes so that they break down into ethanol more easily, imagine what kind of apocalypse we're facing. That's right - it's not necessarily an apocalypse at all. It's simply a world packed with flora and fauna we couldn't possibly recognize today. In her novels Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood imagines that this will result in creepy half-human pigs and sheep who sprout human hair that can be sold as wigs. There is something admittedly horrifying about the idea that humanity could reshape the biosphere in its greedy, simian image. What marks the biotech apocalypse is that it's a scenario where life as we know it doesn't end - it turns into new forms of life.

What I'm saying is that I want to see stories where synthetic biology generates cities and technologies like the ones Jeff VanderMeer imagined in his recent novel Finch, where spore people grow buildings and guns from mushrooms. And I want these tales to do what few apocalyptic tales have dared to do: Explore what it means when what has been destroyed isn't the world, but instead just one instance of the world.

One of the most basic truths we learn from evolutionary theory and geology is that the world we live in - the one whose climate and landmasses we fuss about endlessly - is in fact just one version of Earth. For a long period, Earth had a different set of gasses in its atmosphere, and all life lived in the seas. The composition of our biosphere and state of our climate has changed dramatically over the millennia. C'mon Hollywood - give us a story where the world doesn't suffer apocalyptic death, but instead a dramatic rebirth. One that begins in our nanoscopic genomes, not in mega-explosions.

Image via Yanko Design

For those previously unaware of this televisual masterwork, Martin Landau is John Koenig, commander of Moonbase Alpha, humanity's outpost on, yes, the Moon. After a nuclear explosion, the Moon gets knocked out of orbit, sending Koenig and his intrepid crew on an incredibly odyssey through SPACE… in the year 1999! The title admittedly leaves this point somewhat unclear, so I wanted to take the time to spell that out.

Now, some might ask why such a series needs remaking. Indeed, some might even argue television producers should put the limited resources available for science fiction shows into making bold, new programming. Those people have apparently willfully ignored the way the entertainment industry has operated since...well, since forever, really. Anyway, the Space: 1999 intro is the grooviest thing in television history, and by itself should earn the entire show a second chance.

And make no mistake, folks, this is a show that completely blew its first chance. If the original Battlestar Galactica was an attempt to turn Star Wars into a TV show, then Space: 1999 basically tried to do the same thing with 2001: A Space Odyssey. As you might imagine, they failed at this absurdly lofty goal. The physics at the heart of the show's premise were utterly laughable – no smaller luminaries than Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison considered the notion that the Moon could be blown out of orbit and then cross interstellar distances in weeks the most ludicrous thing they'd ever heard of. The show's early attempts to kick around obscure philosophical points in the context of the celestial void soon devolved into the endless chases and mindless action sequences of, well, the original Battlestar Galactica, only minus all of the iconic stuff with the Cylons.

As such, Space: 1999 shouldn't be remade because there's something brilliant there so much as because it would be such a wonderful challenge for its makers. After all, the show already has one absolutely massive stumbling block, and it's right there in the title. Who in their right mind is going to accept a science fiction show set ten years ago?

And even then, what exactly is the premise of Space: 1999? At least Battlestar Galactica has a simple enough setup and goal – humans fight Cylons, Cylons wipe out humanity, survivors go in search of fabled lost colony, the Earth. It's maybe a little silly on paper, but as the recent series showed, it can be the basis for gripping television. On the other hand, Space: 1999 was never too sure itself of what it was precisely about – people on the Moon get blown out of orbit, weird stuff happens for no discernible reason, weird stuff continues to happen for reasons that are somehow even less discernible than the first set of reasons. It was all a bit too abstract for its own good.

So, let's make it about something. Instead of focusing on the Space part, let's do something with the 1999 part. We have one huge advantage over the show's creators back in 1975 – we actually know what happened in 1999. A new Space: 1999 could be the ultimate nineties nostalgia show, exploring all that delicious Clinton era angst through the spectacularly ridiculous prism of a moonbase that's been blown out into deep space. It wouldn't even need to be a radically different world than our own; just one where the Apollo missions lasted long enough to set up a now antiquated, largely forgotten moonbase. (It's not all that implausible - like anyone remembers the International Space Station even exists.)

Think of it! Instead of just having bizarre metaphysical mind trips inside something called "a black sun", the new Space: 1999 crew can have bizarre metaphysical mind trips while debating Monicagate! And trading Seinfeld quotes! And complaining about how Saving Private Ryan got totally robbed by Shakespeare in Love! And trying to get Windows 98 to work! And assuming the economic boom will never, ever end!

Make no mistake - 80s nostalgia is almost over, and 90s nostalgia is on its way. We're already running out of 80s culture to obsess over, so we're going to have to relive the nineties one way or another. So I have to ask: if we're going to put up with an insipid recreation of nineties life, why shouldn't it be set on a runaway moon hurtling into the vast and dangerous cosmos? Honestly, that sounds like a fair assessment of what happened after 1999 anyway. Keep the original theme tune, and I think we've got ourselves a winner.

If 2012 is as successful as those Hollywood Insiders expect it to be - and with a $23.7 million Friday opening, that looks to be a sure thing right now - then the obvious follow-up isn't the 2013 television series that director Roland Emmerich has been talking about, but a prequel: 2011... explaining not only what happened in the year before the end of the world, but just how how the Monolith-led transformation of Jupiter in 2010 led into the whole thing. That's right: We're talking crossover territory, and who better to take us there than Nicolas Cage?

This is what we're suggesting: While Danny Glover's President and Oliver Platt's chief of staff are hurredly making plans to survive the oncoming apocalypse that they've secretly discovered (as per 2012), a maverick government scientists played by Cage is studying the data captured the spaceship Alexei Leonov (in 2010) and comes up with a plan to contact the aliens behind the Monoliths to try and convince them to cool the Earth from the core temperature-induced collapse we've been promised. Part of this involves going public with that whole "end of the world" thing, which means that before too long, Cage and his family (including surly son Shia LeBeouf) are on the run, being chased by US government agents ordered to keep him quiet at all costs.

While on the run, Cage meets up with 2010's Roy Scheider - or a CGI-animated version thereof, using motion capture technology of John Turturro, just because - who was there when Jupiter got turned into a second sun by the Monoliths at the end of the very-confusing-when-I-was-a-kid second Clarke movie, who is suitably shocked that the government is keeping this whole end of the world thing under wraps, and helps him contact the aliens through some ridiculous-yet-exciting sequence that doesn't really matter in the long run, before dying to add pathos to (a) Cage's mission, and (b) seeing Roy Scheider live again, even if it's only as a CGI character probably animated by Robert Zemeckis, let's face it. Then! Dave Bowman - again, computer generated to look like Keir Dullea, but this time, it's a motion captured performance by Ewan McGregor - appears to Cage and gives him temporary superpowers to fight off the government agents, leading to a series of Matrix-esque action sequences that don't seem dated at all, before listening to Cage try to emote while pleading for the survival of the planet.

Moved by Cage's nervous, jerky-headed plea, Bowman explains that the mysterious aliens can, in fact, save the Earth, but in order to do so, they'll have to abandon Jupiter and come and hide inside the Earth in order to do so. Acting as the ambassador for all of humanity, Cage says that that sounds like a great idea and thanks a lot, and so we're treated to an overblown moment where thousands of Monoliths emerge from the star that was Jupiter, fly towards Earth - Cut to scenes of men in front of radar screens freaking out about all the UFOs flying towards the planet, but just before they call the President, the space radar goes quiet because all the Monoliths have gone into stealth mode - and then float gently to the ground, and then through the ground, before we get a cameo of 2012's Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) looking at a computer saying "The core temperature has dropped! Now there's a chance we just might survive this damn thing!" to someone on the phone, with the additional "And that's how the end of the world didn't actually end the world, and how there aren't two suns in 2012!" being optional depending on how much the audience needs spoonfeeding.

As Dave Bowman disappears, US agents catch up with Cage and his family, killing Cage and causing Shia to not only realize that he loves his dad after all, but also swear to carry on his father's work of talking to aliens and saving the world through diplomacy, car chases and being a maverick. The movie ends with a title card of "ONE YEAR LATER" and shows Shia - with a beard, to show that it is "later" - wandering around the ruins of whatever major city is deemed appropriate, tears in his eyes and looking at the sky, telling his father that he loves him.

I'm telling you, Hollywood: This is the movie that everyone wants to see. Sure, some may dismiss it as shameless fanboy continuity pandering between two movies that are actually unconnected in all but their titles, but to them, I say: Nic Cage, Shia LeBeouf and the CGI reanimation of Roy Scheider. I'll take my 10% in gold bars whenever you're ready, thanks very much.

Bonnie Burton interviewed Kelly, and discovered that he has some pretty fleshed-out ideas for where Jabba should appear next. Could these be the seeds of Kelly's next project?

Kelly confessed that he loves Ewoks, and then said:

The Endor sequence in Jedi is my favorite part in any of the movies. If I was stranded on a desert island and I could only bring one Star Wars movie, it would be Return of the Jedi. The whole set piece with Jabba the Hutt and the desert sequence with the Sarlacc Pit are great. Salacious Crumb is one of my favorite Star Wars characters too.

Jabba is so disgusting. He's just this gigantic slug. And the coolest thing in The Phantom Menace is when you get to see Jabba's wife. In fact, I love to see a movie all about Jabba the Hutt being a gangsta. Or maybe a sitcom called The Hutts where it shows the crazy shenanigans and escapades of the Hutt family.

It could even be like The Sopranos where he just whacks other alien creatures, and executes people, and he leads this foul, hedonistic lifestyle. A Hutt show would be amazing. I want to see that! Do you think that would ever happen?

via StarWars.com (thanks Bonnie!)

V's success last week must feel confusing for the alphabet network; on the one hand, it was the second-highest rated series premiere of the season, and the most-watched 8pm premiere for ABC since Lost, but on the other, they'd already put the show on production hiatus and retooled things behind the scenes in a way that not only means they're unlikely to be able to bring the show back before the announced March 2010 return - thereby potentially losing whatever momentum the show will have at the end of this four episode mini-season - but also means that they've replaced many of the folk responsible for the show's success in the first place (Then again, who knows how many people liked what they saw last week and will return tomorrow?). Ever eager to help television networks out of a jam, we've come up with some possible ways to keep the V-mentum going while viewers wait for more Visitors:

Re-Edit Other, Little-Seen, Shows To Tie In With V
Got any police procedurals lying around? Just add an extra scene at the end where the perp turns out to get a cut on his hand and WTF HE'S A LIZARD MAN. Then you can cut to Elizabeth Mitchell getting a phone call and saying "Another one? Oh my God, they're everywhere." Cue dramatic music and cut to black. Pretend that it's an effort to show just how widespread the alien invasion actually is.

Re-Edit Episodes Of The Original V
Start each episode with Morena Baccarin talking to some minion Visitor and saying "You know, this reminds me of that time we invaded an Earth in a parallel dimension, and I had that long hair and 1980s evil bitch mask" before cutting to the original episode. Then, at the end, cap each episode off with Baccarin laughing and saying "Now, that was a sticky situation!"

Run Trailers For Lost Promising That It'll End With The Visitors Arriving On Earth
It's not like we have any better idea how Lost is going to end, let's face it. And, let's face it; like you can't already imagine the serious voiceover going "It started with a planecrash... But once they've solved the riddle of the island... They'll have to face the visitors." And then use Party of Five footage of Matthew Fox and Scott Wolf and pretend it's a flashback. Alternately...

Run Trailers Reminding People That They Could Just Watch Lost Instead
Again, cue the serious voiceover: "Waiting to find out what happens in V? Why? Lost is back on and it's much, much better. We promise that we'll throw Alan Tudyk in if it'll make a difference. Come on! It's the last season!"

Just Rename FlashForward
Am I the only person who thinks that FlashForward and V are long-lost brother shows? Both of them have worldwide events that shock humanity that are linked to terrorism and some believe prove the existence of God, both have FBI agents as central characters working to uncover the truth about said events, and both feature attractive people from as many different demographics as possible drawn into the web of slowly uncovering storylines. Considering that FlashForward's ratings are slipping, why not just edit in a new subplot that explains that the FlashForwards are really the result of Visitor experiments, show Dominic Monaghan peeling off his face to show that he's a lizard, and just call the show V from December onwards? Would anyone really care that much?

"Every hero becomes a bore at last." – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Yes. I'm opening with a quote. But it's a quote by a guy named Waldo, so you can picture him in a striped shirt if you find that pretentious.

There. Does that make it go down smoother? Good.

Besides, it's true. After a certain amount of time, heroes lose their luster. Ethical missteps accumulate, continuity drags, and personality quirks that were once fun are either watered down to blandness or begin to grate on a fan's nerves. Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy, and that's the truth. (I am piling on the literary allusions today.) The movies, tv shows, books and comics that strip down and re-examine the traditional superhero trope are beginning to outsell the trope itself.

As a reactionary, I say that you will pry my traditional superhero comics out of my cold, dead hands. As a capitulationist, I say please let me offer a few suggestions.

Murders Are Always, Always, Always, Entertaining:
What can you get if you like a good, old-fashioned murder mystery but aren't willing to listen to the legal jargon and watch extended crime scene technician montages? Not a damn thing, which is why the first two characters I'm suggesting would be a success. Slam Bradley is a hard-drinking, rough-living, tough-talking old-timer. Jason Bard is a guy who is basically stuck together with masking tape, both because he's the kind of honorable man who faces danger and the kind of idiot who was shown in at least one comic scratching his own head with the barrel of his loaded gun. Naked. No, I'm not kidding.

They're both private detectives, and neither has much regard for either technology or legality. Together they would star in a comic that's all breaking down doors and inappropriate relations with clients and absolutely no talk about residual heat signatures or torts.

Isn't it time that we, as consumers, stopped anticipating legal complications in our crime investigation and started anticipating good, old-fashioned sleaze? Isn't it time we just heard about the people at the lab doing tests on evidence instead of seeing it done set to a song by The Who? Isn't it time we brought back the old guy in a trench coat saying ‘Oh, one more thing,' before nailing the suspect to the wall? And then hitting him with another suspect?

I think so, my friends. I think so.

My Name Is Andy:
The old saying ‘tragedy is when I cut my finger and comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die,' really comes into play here. When last we saw Marvel Comics' Awesome Andy, the Android, he was feeling like this:

Hilarious, right?

Andy had a bad week, and decided to go off into the world to find himself. He's an android who can absorb the abilities of anyone around him, so finding himself could be a complicated issue. I think of it as more of a marketing opportunity. Emo Andy, Punk Andy, Country-Western Andy, Ironic Jerkbag Andy; this is something that anyone can relate to. This comic would be a mash-up of Dollhouse, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, and My Name Is Earl.

I'm sure some of you are saying, ‘What in the name of god could save such a terrible concept?' This: The main character can do anything, anything at all, except talk. Except talk.

This doesn't just save the comic. This turns it into a potential TV show. Think of all the shows I just mentioned. Now imagine the leads can't talk. I can see the smiles on your faces from here. They're beautiful.

Sex and the Desperate Cougar Housewives Done Right:
If there is one flaw in the current crop of shows marketed to women, and there aren't, there are many, but if there were one, it would be that despite all evidence to the contrary, the characters are still treated as if they are decent human beings.

This new potential comic doesn't have that problem. What it has instead is fantastic crossover potential. Over the years, most of the heroes have picked up their share of floozies. From the banal to the murderous, said floozies have tried to lure the heroes away from their significant others too many times to count. Such stories tend to be uninteresting when told from the point of view of the protagonists. What we need is them told from the POV of the temptresses.

Put Cat Grant, Lana Lang (Would-be Mrs. Kent-Els, both of them.) on a team with Marianne (the ex-homeless, romance-novel-writing, flower-shop-attendant and Green Arrow lover), with Madame Masque (The Tony Terrorizer) and you'd have a pretty dull comic. You need something to spice it up, and I have just the person.

Namor. Admit it, an egomaniacal fish man really puts the spice in that team. The comic would still be irresistible. It would be like a sashimi cupcake. Everyone would know it was bad, but they wouldn't be able to resist. Go ahead. Try not to read. You will fail. This, I promise you.

The Best Office Ever:
Comics can't just be romance and murder. We need some substance to go with all of that flash. And where does America usually get substance? Why, we borrow it from Great Britain, of course. We've ripped off Jane Austen novels and Shakespeare plays, but when even those proved too much for us we moved down the culture ladder to television shows. The Office was a smash hit on two continents, but it lacked something comics could provide: sociopaths. Which brings us to the comic that absolutely, unquestionably, urgently, must be made: Wayne Enterprises Human Resources Department.

There are many rants on the internet saying that Bruce Wayne's money could prevent crime more effectively than Batman's reign of terror. Those ranters clearly choose to ignore what Bruce Wayne does with his money.

By night Batman passes out cards for Wayne Enterprises to prostitutes, junkies, and petty criminals caught in the middle of a suitably sympathetic crime. By day Bruce Wayne roams the halls of the Wayne sky-scraper, handing out college scholarships to anyone who looks like they might have the talent or ambition to contribute meaningfully to the company. But that's just day-to-day stuff for the long-suffering staff of the Wayne Enterprises HR Department.

In both comics and cartoons, Wayne Enterprises has been shown to have a Hire-A-Felon policy in place. These felons can be anything from reformed armed robbers to the guy who likes to carve a puppet out of the nearest available piece of wood, pretend it's his boss, and have it plan diabolical crimes. That's right. The characters in the HR division spend their time throwing going away parties for bright-eyed innocent employees going off to highly marketable places like art school, finding jobs for hookers whose marketable skills include being able to talk, and explaining the sexual harassment policy to a guy who is basically the villain from the Saw movies.

Add Steve Carell to this bunch:

And it's gold. Gold.

We noted earlier this month that the mummy, once one of Universal's favorite movie monsters, has been absent from the screen of late. And there are plenty of other creatures from fiction and folklore that have been popular in fiction, but haven't quite ascended to the level of favorite movie monsters. For example:

Dybbuk
Where you've seen it: S. Ansky's play The Dybbuk (and its film adaptation) and this year's horror film The Unborn. It has also been mentioned in the Coen brothers' film A Serious Man and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
What it is: A spirit from Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is the spirit of a dead person who possesses a living person. There are numerous reasons a dybbuk may do this to escape punishment for some transgression it committed while alive, or to seek revenge for some evil committed against it, or because it is lost and needs to find its way to the afterlife.
Why it deserves a shot at the big time: The Unborn may not have done dybbuks justice, but any story about a dybbuk has the opportunity to tap into the rich tapestry of Jewish mysticism. Plus, possession stories tend to be dominated by Catholic traditions; it's always nice to get a different flavor.

Incubus/Succubus
Where you've see it: Numerous stories and books including the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, The Dresden Files, The Dark Tower, Balzac's "The Succubus," and Richard Matheson's "The Likeness of Julie." Also, an episode of South Park.
What it is: Incubi and succubi are sex demons that bed (often sleeping, often unwilling) humans, either to feed on their sexual energy or produce a child. Sometimes the humans die in the process.
Why they deserve a shot at the big time: After enduring four movies featuring the largely chaste Edward Cullen, it would be a relief to see a type of vampire who require sex to live (although I hate to think what would go into being a "vegetarian" succubus). Plus, sexing someone to death could make for some nice body horror (to say nothing of the possibility of demonic genitalia). Despite their popularity in fiction, these sex demons are curiously absent from film — although a few years before Star Trek, William Shatner starred in Incubus, a succubus-filled horror film written entirely in Esperanto.

Lich
Where you've see it: Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy.
What it is: Sort of like zombies with brains (and not the eating kind), liches are undead creatures who retain their intellect but whose bodies keep on rotting. They've generally chosen this way of non-life as a sort of perverse immortality.
Why it deserves a shot at the big time: Liches have been a staple of high fantasy, and it's time to drag them into the modern era. Egomaniacal scholars, wizards, and business men could all seek to preserve their consciousness for future generations, with terrifying (and fairly gross) results. There's a definite supervillainous quality to liches; they may not jump out and shout "boo," but they're likely to have a horde of horrifying minions. And when you finally see their faces, liches can be pretty frightening themselves.

Ghouls
Where you've see them: Pretty much everywhere, from the works of HP Lovecraft to Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.
What they are: Although in recent years, the word "ghoul" has become synonymous with any undead thing, ghouls are actually monsters from Arabian folklore. Like zombies, they feed on human flesh (living or dead), but they are also intelligent and able to shapeshift.
Why they deserve a shot at the big time: Ghouls may not have the elegant simplicity of zombies, there is still room for ghouls in the realm of flesh-eating beasts. Lovecraft played with the ghoul mythology quite a bit, and even wrote ghoulish characters who would aid the protagonist (though one imagines that a clever ghoul would lead said protagonist to their tasty demise). Ghouls could be comical horror sidekicks (always trying to eat you), or they could be formidable foes. The Supernatural episode "Jump the Shark" had the Winchesters fending off some vengeful ghouls who would take the form of the last person they ate.

Wendigo
Where you've see it: The Wendigo is the Bruce Campbell of B-list monsters; it pops up everywhere. Sam and Dean Winchester encounter a Wendigo in the second episode of Supernatural, and the creature has turned up in Charmed, Blood Ties, and Pet Sematary.
What it is: Coming from Algonquian mythology, the Wendigo is a cannibalistic monster associated with famine and long winters. Humans can become Wendigo by eating human flesh, and once they have the demon in them, they are perpetually hungry, growing larger and hungrier with each kill.
Why it deserves a shot at the big time: Wendigo are already playing in the horror minor leagues, and it's time for them to step up. And, in areas where the Wendigo legend thrives, it has certainly captured the imagination in much the way werewolves have. Canada has recorded incidents of Wendigo trials, where people thought to be Wendigo were put on trial for consuming human flesh. A guilty verdict could mean death and subsequent burning.

What other neglected monsters would you like to see on screen?

Sectaurs
The Set-Up: A toyline that only lasted one year - perhaps because the world was as grossed-out by the idea of half-insect half-humans as I was when I was ten years old (Nonetheless, props to whoever decided that the character's giant-insect pets/horse-like-equivalents would be gloves, so you could make their legs move) - Sectaurs followed a He-Man-esque model of quasi-mystical good guys ("The Shining Realm of Prosperon," led by the heroic Prince Dargon) versus equally-quasi-mystical bad guys ("The Dark Domain of Synax," led by General Spidrax) on a planet called Symbion.
Was There A Franchise? Comics books, cartoons and kids storybooks.
The Movie: Embrace the alien, and CGI everything to make it look weird and wonderful. Play up the mythical aspects and turn it into a kids franchise with teeth.

Centurions
The Set-Up: In the "near future," three (later five, but no-one remembers the last two) men fight terrorists (led by the aptly-named Doc Terror) by wearing weirdly weaponized robotic suits that give them something approaching superpowers. Despite being the product of the mid-80s, their tagline of "PowerXtreme!" was curiously a decade ahead of its time.
Was There A Franchise? Cartoons and comic books.
The Movie: It's GI Joe with added technology. Seriously, how can this fail? Just remember to rename the bad guy.

Adventures of The Galaxy Rangers
The Set-Up: The Old West becomes the New West as mankind moves off-planet and colonizes the universe, reverting to cowboy style in the process. The concept behind Galaxy Rangers offered a chance to mix-and-match moments of American history as the Rangers themselves - essentially cyborg versions of Western lawmen, riding robotic horses - fight against a "vast and crumbling Empire" ruled by The Queen of the Crown. Oh, and they're against slavery, as well.
Was There A Franchise? Just a cartoon.
The Movie: Pull back on the sleekness of the technology, and give us a steampunk revisionary version that's more Firefly than Wild Wild West.

MASK
The Set-Up: Pretty much "What if Transformers weren't robots but could still transform," MASK - which stood for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, proving that even the US Government aren't above bad spelling when a good acronym's at stake - was a GI Joe-esque anti-terrorist squad who used vehicles that had alternate combat modes against VENOM (Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem). Both sides also had helmets that gave them special powers, which may have been a concept too far, really.
Was There A Franchise? Cartoons, comic books, and video games.
The Movie: Oddly enough, MASK was brought into the GI Joe franchise last year in the toys, so maybe this perfect mix of Joe and Transformers is already taken care of, in terms of Hollywood.

Power Lords
The Set-Up: Another failed toyline that ripped off Masters of The Universe, Power Lords saw Adam Power use the Cosmic Power Jewel to become Lord Power, fighting evil dictator Arkus. Much more amusing were the henchmen, who had names like Bakatak, Disguyzor and Drrench, demonstrating how desperate toymakers could get when deadlines loomed.
Was There A Franchise? Comic books and video games.
The Movie: Actually, maybe they should just make the Masters of The Universe movie instead, as this is so clearly stolen from those toys.

Spiral Zone
The Set-Up: Ignore characters with names like Dirk Courage and Benjamin Davis Franklin, and concentrate on the admittedly-awesome concept: A mad scientist hijacks a space shuttle to turn half the planet into an altered state called the Spiral Zone, where everyone within becomes a mind-controlled zombie. Five soldiers with specially-constructed suits to combat the Zone's effects are sent inside to destroy the Zone Generators and save the world.
Was There A Franchise? Cartoons and comic books.
The Movie: Drop everything other than the basic idea, and make it into a dark action movie with Christian Bale working off his Terminator karma. This is one child dystopia that deserves to be brought back meaner and more hardcore than before.

Zoids
The Set-Up: Robotic dinosaurs and ancient creatures trapped in permanently-ongoing wars on alien planets, although if you read the British tie-in comic, you'd know there was much more - and much, much ripped off of popular movies of a few years previously - going on.
Was There A Franchise? Internationally, comic books and cartoons, but not in the US.
The Movie: Is it too much to ask for Jurassic Park: The Robots? Other than simply adapting the UK comic story (Spaceship full of humans crashlands on Zoid planet, characters act out Alien and Terminator cliches), I can't think of any other way to do it.

Crystar
The Set-Up: Another fantasy toyline, but one that wasn't, surprisingly, ripped off from He-Man, Crystar started life as a pitch from Marvel Comics to various toy companies before Remco bit the crystal bullet and manufactured Crystar and his crystaline brothers and Moltar and his fire-themed minions. Despite offering dragons, castles and personifications of a metaphysical battle between order and chaos, the line only lasted one year.
Was There A Franchise? Only comics.
The Movie: Tone down the Chaos/Order subtext, ramp up the "warring brothers" aspect and go all-out on the fantasy - Give us a full-on Lord Of The Rings set on another planet, with the kind of scope and scale that only Peter Jackson or James Cameron could think of.

Rom The Space-Knight

The Set-Up: Sure, the toy - manufactured by Parker Brothers, and originally called COBOL - may have flopped spectacularly in the US, but the cyborg space warrior lived on for years afterwards in his Marvel Comics series, and even longer in our hearts.
Was There A Franchise? Only comics.
The Movie: Redesign Rom to be slightly less... boxy, and pull in The Invaders paranoia from the comic book, and you've got something with an obvious enough hero to play well in multiplexes but with the potential for something much more subtle and sneaky for those who want to look at it that way.

Micronauts
The Set-Up: If ever there was a toyline that deserved a movie, it's this space opera line adapted from various Japanese figures, especially considering that it's the line that indirectly gave birth to Transformers and the 1980s revival of GI Joe that made that franchise what it is today.
Was There A Franchise? Only comics.
The Movie: With "Time Travelers", Mega Cities, Space Gliders and villains who look like Darth Vader, there's surely only one option: Try to create the next Star Wars, complete with new cultures, new danger and derring-do, and an empire that could support Baron Karzas and Acroyears... whatever an Acroyear turns out to be.

We've seen a lot of stellar shorts here; some are simply wonderful as brief visits with strange beings and strange worlds, and some are already being adapted as feature films (like Sundance-winning Tomo and possibly Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog). These are just a few of the short films that could make for wonderful, fun, or strange feature films:

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
Notes: Jasper Morello proved a film festival darling, taking top prizes at the Australian Film Institute Awards, Flickerfest, and Dragon Con, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film.

Synopsis: Jasper Morello, a disgraced airman, lives in a city plagued by a terrible and incurable sickness. He is called to be a navigator on a mission carrying an unusual passenger, the eccentric physician Claude Belgon, who is studying airmen in hopes of devising a cure. During the voyage, his wife back home, a nurse, develops the sickness, but the crew finds a strange beast whose flesh can cure the sickness. Unfortunately, the creature has a taste for human blood.

How it could be expanded: Already 26 minutes long, Jasper Morello wouldn't need much expanding once we get a bit more into Jasper's background and the personalities of the crew. But in an expanded Jasper Morello, Claude Belgon could commission an air mission on behalf of the Royal Academy to find a mysterious treasure long rumored by airmen to exist on a far off island, one closely guarded by air pirates. Belgon is fully aware of the treasure's true nature: it is a deadly monster that could potentially cure the sickness. When the airship reaches the island, they are nearly thwarted by the air pirates, but they manage to defeat them, taking one unconscious pirate hostage. They find several of the monster cocoons and take them aboard, but then crew members start disappearing. It is not until the air pirate wakes that it is revealed that Belgon has been feeding the crewmen to the growing monsters. From there, the remaining crew would have to evade Belgon and the monsters (and keep the ship afloat). In the final confrontation, it would be revealed that Belgon chose Morello specifically for this mission because he knew of Morello's disgrace and his wife's likelihood of contracting the sickness, and believed it would make him easy to manipulate. The film ends not with Morello trapped in a cavern feeding the beast, but him steering the monster-filled airship home after killing Belgon, knowing full well that, in trying to save his wife, he could be condemning the entire city.

What could kill it: Much of the short's charm comes from its silhouette animation, which might not translate well to a feature-length film. A live action, or perhaps stop motion, film would have to stay close to the look and feel of the original.

You can pitch us an all-new idea, a spin-off of an existing series or concept, or whatever you want... as long as it's something more interesting than "All of Grace Park's scenes from Battlestar Galactica in long, lingering, slow-motion with a soundtrack by popular 1990s European dance act 2Unlimited" - We've seen that kind of thing before, thanks to the wonders of personal video editing software.* Use the comments section below to hit us with your best shot, as Pat Benitar once so poignantly sang, and we'll announce our arbitrarily-chosen favorite this time next week.

(* - This is, of course, a joke. We'd never go with 2Unlimited following their disappointing reunion gig. It's Technotronic all the way.)

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles/Thor writer Ashley Edward Miller was tweeting about showing his newborn son "both Star Wars movies," and teaching his son — just a few days old — the importance of knowing that Han shot first. This started us thinking, once again: What would have happened if Greedo had shot first instead?

With all the thousands of comics and books and cartoons related to Star Wars lately, there really should be a miniseries set in the alternate universe where Greedo shot first. And killed Han Solo, before Han could ever embark on his awesomely redemptive journey with Luke and Obi-Wan, leading to him becoming a General in the final battle against the Empire.

So what would have happened if Greedo had shot Han? Shot him DEAD? This is the sort of question to which we give far too much consideration, until we realize we have failed to leave the house for three days straight. Clearly this is an alternate universe story that must be told.

So everyone who has seen Star Wars: the colon-less movie will know that Greedo makes a profound impression in his few moments on screen. His latex face is more expressive than all the other masked aliens in the Cantina, and he radiates a peevish self-respect. Our favorite Rodian is a master thug and the son of the legendary hustler Greedo the Elder, who kicked Anakin's ass in a Phantom Menace deleted scene:

Okay, so Anakin is on top for a while there, but watch the clip again — Greedo flips him over and is just about to bring the rain of pain, when Qui-Gonn Jinn shows up and breaks it up. Anakin was three seconds away from being unable to eat anything but blue Bantha milk, through a straw.

Anyway, we're confident that if Greedo shot first, he would have been the only one to get off a shot. We've always had a soft spot for Greedo, ever since he had the kick-ass action figure. So what happens if Greedo kills Han?

At this point, Han has already made his deal to give Luke, Obi-Wan and those pesky droids passage to Alderaan on the Millennium Falcon, and Chewbacca has gone off to prep the ship. So there's Greedo, standing over Han's messy corpse, and he needs to take Han's head back to Jabba to collect his bounty. That means going to the spaceport, where Chewbacca's tending the Falcon, and Wookiees don't take kindly to seeing their friends' heads dangling from a bounty hunter's scaly hand. So Greedo has to get rid of the Wookiee somehow — he's never heard of the "Let the Wookiee win" principle.

Luckily, if you go by the remastered edition of the original Star Wars, Greedo knows Boba Fett is hanging around the spaceport, along with Jabba. So all Greedo has to do is maneuver the Wookiee and the Mandalorian into each other's crossfire, and the problem takes care of itself. Good thing he's got the severed head of Han Solo. Turns out Cameron Diaz isn't the only one who can make a crowded room stop with a mere toss of the head — only it's Han Solo's head that Greedo tosses, to Chewy, who catches it with an anguished growl. Chewy pulls his bowcaster, but he's still holding the head of his beloved captain in one paw, making his reaction time considerably slower. Chewy does get off one shot, but Greedo ducks behind Boba Fett, who catches it square in his unprotected neck area. Greedo shoots Chewbacca before he can get off a second shot, and it's all over.

All in all, it's been a good day for Greedo so far. He's got the reward money for killing Solo, he's got the money Obi-Wan paid for passage to Alderaan, and I'm guessing Jabba lets Greedo keep the Millennium Falcon. There's just the matter of what to do about those annoying passengers.

Obi-Wan and Luke show up, droids in tow, for their passage to Alderaan. Greedo informs them the ship's had a change of captain, and he'll be taking them to Alderaan instead. Once they're aboard and on their way, Greedo seriously considers keeping his end of the deal — after all, an additional 15,000 once they get to Alderaan seems pretty sweet. But the longer he spends on board with the perky kid and the skeevy old guy and their holo-chess, and their weird, unsavory blindfold games, the less he likes it. And then he figures out that these guys don't really have any money: They're bringing something to Alderaan, which they'll get paid for. The droids, maybe?

If there's one thing Greedo believes in, it's cutting out the middlemen.

Luckily, the Millennium Falcon has a button to depressurize the rear passenger areas, while keeping air on the flight deck. (Although Greedo keeps a helmet on, just in case.) One press of a button later, and the young hero and his mentor are floating in space, turning a nasty shade of cyan. The droids are fine, they can hang on when the air all gets sucked out, and they don't need to breathe anyway. Sure, the droids aren't happy, but what are they going to do?

With the humans out of the way, the Rodian rogue has time to tinker with those droids and find out what's so valuable about them. The gold humanoid one, he quickly realizes is worthless, so he disassembles him and uses bits of him as bling on his favorite vest. But the dome-shaped one? A different story. Soon, Greedo's watching the "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi" video, and thinking maybe Greedo is her only hope. At least, for 15,000, he can be anybody's only hope.

But of course, Greedo doesn't quite make it to Alderaan. The planet gets wiped out before he reaches it, and soon he's being yanked by something that's not a moon, it's... something different. The Falcon goes flying into the Death Star, and Greedo sees all his dreams of insane profit in danger of being incinerated just like Alderaan. Time to lose the C-3PO bling, and go ninja on these Imperials. Greedo slips out of the Falcon and starts exploring the massive Death Star, his head buzzing with how much that tractor beam would be worth if he could disassemble it. Not to mention the reactor.

And then Greedo finds the lady in white, from the robot's holo-recording. He got her message! And he's here to rescue her, he tells her in Huttese. The other guy couldn't make it, sorry. She's both lippy and suspicious. So when she and Greedo get trapped in a trash compactor, he slithers out, nimble as a gecko, and leaves her there to get squashed like a ripe muja fruit. No real loss, since he's still got the R2 unit with all the secrets on it.

But then... Greedo runs face to face with Darth Vader, the Dark Lord Of The Sith. The hulking, asthmatic figure that nobody ever talks back to and lives. Greedo freezes, in total panic, ninja mode failing him completely.

And then Darth Vader looks at Greedo and howls, "Noooooo!"

For a moment, Vader is once again the young Anakin, the little boy whom Greedo (the elder) tormented and punished. Vader is face to face with the one man (other than Watto) who haunts his childhood dreams, the person whose mistreatment helped start him on the path to the Dark Side. Unable to tell the difference between Greedo the Elder and Greedo the Younger, Vader forgets all his Jedi training, all his Sith lore, and for a moment he's just a scared little boy once again. "I didn't cheat in that pod race!" Vader howls.

Greedo doesn't know what's going on here, but he knows he only has one chance. And if there's one thing Greedo's good at, it's taking chances. He jumps the Dark Lord, aiming to put a blaster bolt in his breathing apparatus before Vader can crush his throat or use Force Lightning on him. And in Anakin's twisted mind, for just a second, they're two little kids scrapping in the dirt. Then Vader gets a grip on himself and pulls his light saber, just as Greedo lands on his stomach. The light saber goes just slightly wrong, slicing off Vader's own arm and plunging into his chest. Greedo jumps off the Sith Lord and lands on his feet like a cat, barely believing that he's standing over the dead body of the most feared man in the galaxy.

There has to be some way Greedo can make a profit off this.

Stripping the armor off Darth Vader's dismembered corpse is a messy, painstaking job, and the armor's big enough to fit three Greedos inside. But he knows a guy in Cloud City who would pay a small fortune for the Sith Lord's real armor, just to have propped up in his vestibule... maybe with a drinks tray. There's no way to carry the armor, so Greedo has to figure out how to wear it. He stuffs the light saber (carefully deactivated) and some junk into the boots, so he can stand up in it.

Greedo can just about walk around in Vader's suit, but he constantly looks like he needs to pee really bad, and the arms just sort of flop around like Vader's having an embolism. And forget talking, not that anyone would understand why Vader's suddenly speaking Huttese anyway.

Good thing the Stormtroopers aren't paid to ask questions. They ask if Lord Vader needs an escort, and Greedo tries to shake the big black helmet — no, no escort required! — but he makes Vader nod instead, by mistake. Soon, the shambling Dark Lord has a dozen Troopers following him around, and Greedo really does feel like pissing himself. That light saber in the right boot keeps digging into Greedo's foot, and Greedo's paranoid that it'll switch on by accident.

Still, you don't get to be one of Jabba's hand-picked (flipper-picked?) bounty hunters by lacking brio. So Greedo marches all of his entourage to the home of the tractor beam, and leads them to that bridge thingy that leads to the control panel. With a series of spasmodic twitches to that herculean black torso, black-gloved arms flopping around, Greedo conveys that he wants them to extend the bridge to the tractor beam. Then it's just a matter of stumbling across the bridge without falling into the bottomless pit. None of the stormtroopers notices when a tiny green hand snakes out of Vader's armor to fiddle with the tractor beam controls — stormtroopers aren't paid to notice stuff — and anyway, Greedo wraps his big black cloak around himself as best he can.

Greedo almost gets away with it, too — except the Emperor has felt a disturbance in the Dark Side. His counterpart, the only other Sith lord and the most promising apprentice of them all, has died. Darth Sidious knows this as well as he knows that Force Lighting stings. Greedo doesn't even get back to the Millennium Falcon before the Emperor appears, surrounded by his red-helmeted Royal Guard. "That's not Vader!" the Emperor cries. "Stop him!"

Greedo stops dead still, arms flopping. What to do? What to do?

Greedo tries to raise his hands, but he can't. The Royal Guard surrounds him, and they grab his arms to lead him away. And the arms come off. So does the helmet. The Emperor is standing, aghast, staring at the headless, armless shell of Darth Vader. Was this merely Vader's armor come to life? A ghost animating the Sith lord's armor? One of those Death Trooper thingies? For the first time in many years, the Emperor does not know what to think.

So he's even more surprised when a green head pops out of Vader's neck, and a green arm flies out of the shoulder socket, blaster clutched in a green fist. Greedo spies the Emperor and does what Greedo does best.

Greedo shoots first.

We'll spare you the details of Greedo's coronation as Emperor — it goes on for weeks, and the Cantina Band gets flown in, and there are whole planets flooded with namana liquor for Greedo to drink from. He actually quite likes the big robe thing, and having the red helmet guys following him around is actually quite cool. The most important thing is, the galaxy enters into decades of peace and prosperity. Greedo turns out to be surprisingly good at keeping the hyperspace lanes open, and letting people go about their business. All hail Emperor Greedo!

After the game-changing events of last season's finale, fans that campaigned so hard to save their beloved geek idol fear that the show is selling out to Subway, that Chuck's new superpowers will rob him of his everyman appeal, and worst of all that we may have seen the last of the Buy More and the Nerd Herd.

Listen up, Chuck; I may just be able to save you. Just stay in the car.

The zesty tang of corporate whoredom was all over last season. Fans who cried "sellout!" when they heard about the show's dirty dealings with Subway obviously were not paying attention for the past two seasons. Chuck has always been the television-show equivalent of a NASCAR driver's jacket, and we've loved the show all the more for it. iPhones and foot–long subs have always served to bring us into Chuck's reality, not out of it. In a culture as logo-laden as our own, product placement merely gives the impression that these could be our lives, and we too may one day be tapped to be super spies.

When we last left our hero, he had upgraded to Intersect 2.0, the scene itself rife with subliminal and not-so-subliminal advertising. Did anyone else feel like they were watching a giant Hulu ad? After the upgrade, Chuck is new and improved, and now comes with Kung Fu grip. What other goodies does Chuck's new cerebral software come with? The possibilities are endless. But with great power comes great responsibility; not just for Chuck, but for co-creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedek not to fall into the Heroes trap of giving human protagonists superpowers and thereby removing all traces of humanity. Hopefully, Chuck's new powers will serve to trip him up in more hilarious and endearing ways, while allowing him to still save the day.

With Chuck and Morgan's departure from the Buy More, it's questionable how much we'll be seeing of the motley crew of Green shirts in the third season. While the antics of Jeffster have lost some of their appeal, I fear for the show if it departs completely from the land of discount electronics and fast computer repair. The show's sweet and simple premise, namely Chuck's perilous tango between his real-world dead-end job and the fantastical world of espionage and intrigue, is what keeps us watching.

It'll take more than following these guidelines to save Bartowski. He'll need help. We saw last season that the ratings of the show took a quantum leap with the arrival of several guest stars, from Dominic Monaghan to Scott Bakula and Chevy Chase. I propose that the best way to make the most of Chuck's second chance is to give us even more star power to fuel the third season. Here are a few suggestions:

Kristen Bell
Bell's comic timing is perfect for this show. We're all a little tired of the Sarah & Chuck sub-plot, and no cliché is more satisfying than a third party coming between our ambivalent lovers. As a clumsy and perky Buy More employee, Kristen Bell would not only look great in a green polo shirt, but would also steal the show and hopefully Chuck's heart. Half-way through the season Bell would be revealed to be a CIA agent working undercover, and could flex her Veronica Mars spy-girl muscles while stealing secrets and doing improbable stunts.

Alec Baldwin
Both Bell and Baldwin have most recently been working for NBC, so they wouldn't have to go very far for to spend some quality time with the network's pet project. Alec Baldwin would be brilliant as Agent Casey's West Point / CIA mentor, who returns to head up a delicate case and makes Casey jealous when his mentor takes a shine to Chuck.

Neil Patrick Harris
We all love NPH. He could appear to ward off the dreaded mid-season slump, save the ratings and re-invigorate the show. NPH would play a computer-genius / entrepreneur who has designed the world's newest AI search engine. The CIA hires NPH to design a special Intersect search feature, so that Chuck can access all those Government secrets on command.

Jonathan Pryce
We saw last season with Chevy Chase's character that putting a face to FULCRUM and having an identifiable super villain made the show that much more enjoyable. This time around, we need a new big bad, and I propose Jonathan Pryce. Pryce proved himself a worthy adversary as the Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies, has endless desk-jockey geek-cred thanks to Brazil, and no one wears a condescending smirk quite the same way.

It's also time for new blood at the Buy More. I volunteer Napoleon Dynamite's Tina Majorino, Freaks&Geeks' Samm Levine, and Nick & Norah's Aaron Yoo to be some new scruffy Nerd Herders.

Dear Heroes,

What happened? Villains marked an all time low in your ratings, and lost you a significant portion of your core audience (myself included). You broke my heart, Heroes. Fugitives won me back in much the same way your ex does when he or she promises to reform, to be better and try harder. But the make-up sex just wasn't that great; the second half of the third season was just too little too late, with the writers and network executives over-compensating furiously with its Con Air plot line and conspiracy theories pieced together with duct tape and hurried exposition. Heroes, if you really want to win me back, here's what you have to do.

New Talent. With Bryan Fuller off to pursue new projects, there are some pretty big shoes to fill. If Fuller's replacement generates the same buzz you did around Fuller's return to the show, and then deliver on it, you may just win many of us back. Carlton Cuse, who is wrapping up his epic run with Lost, might just be the hero you need. Other people capable of filling the void could be Adam Horowitz (the Lost scribe, not the Beastie Boy) or David Fury, the uber-talented Joss Whedon alum. I'll even put in a plug for Rob Thomas (creator of Veronica Mars), who has an amazing gift for crafting characters we love - and love to hate.

"You know how this works; one of us, one of them." Heroes is at its best when pairing up a hero with a human. For the first two seasons, and well into the third, Hiro and Ando formed the beating heart of the show for just this reason... and then you had to go and give Ando super powers. Why? The show is at its peak when specials and non-specials are grappling to understand one another and find common ground (Yes, I would even use Claire and her relationship with the Bennetts, overplayed as it is, as an example here). Continuing to team up specials and non-specials is a sure fire win.

We need a new geek. Look, I'll be honest; The moment you lost me in Villains was when you gave Mohinder powers. Dr. Suresh was originally conceived as a fifty-something scientist, until hunky hero Sendhil Ramamurthy was cast in the role. You never quite reconciled the fact that the geeky scientist who was there to serve as an anchoring point to the show and deliver much needed exposition was also part of its beefcake buffet. We need a scientist whose theories we believe, and who can deliver lines like "The virus is breaking down her DNA and turning her into something altogether... different" with a straight face. Perhaps a long-lost protege of Mohinder's father, or a government-funded geneticist can turn up to espouse the comic book science we've been missing (Someone like much underrated and underused character actor Ian Hart would be a perfect fit). Heroes, you need to find your Daniel Faraday.

Focus. The cast has gotten wildly out of control. Too many specials, too many superpowers, and an endless supply of shape-shifting characters, twins, and future selves is just mucking up the works. Slim down the cast and find your focus - the core group of characters we care about. Kill off the characters who only annoy us. Ali Larter's character comebacks have gotten ridiculous. Besides, we only tolerated her in the first place so we could have Micah. He, along with his super-mimic cousin, and human GPS Molly almost disappeared entirely from the show, with Micah just making a recent comeback. These kids are now perfectly poised, as they hit their 'tweens, to be the subjects of mutation-as-puberty-metaphor story arcs. You are already mining every good X-Men device ever conceived, why not just steal that one as well?

Everybody loves bad girls. I miss your sexy villains; I loved Elle, and I howled in horror when she got killed off last season. Madeline Zima is joining the show next season, and could very well fill the sexy female villain role, with the storyline in the hands of the right writers. Summer Glau is also looking for work in Tinseltown these days, and playing a full-on femme fatale would be a challenge we'd all love to see her take. Ray Park, the sexiest Sith, also joins the cast next season, reportedly as an evil carny character. I'm keeping my fingers crossed you match him up with some equally amazing female character.

Kill the cheerleader, Save the show. Hayden Panettiere has a film career now, and it's time to let her go. Between her bad acting and on-set temper tantrums, she is completely destroying the show. Besides, killing Claire off would give many of the characters, HRG especially, some great motivation.

One last thing...9th Wonders needs to come back in a big way. Please?

Geoff Manaugh, creator of BLDG BLOG (and occasional contributor to io9), is known for his spellbinding, science fictional interpretations of architecture. Inspired by the building that housed the old Ghostbusters headquarters (pictured), as well as the forbidding New York telephone exchange building, he's come up with an idea for the movie that involves a haunted telephone system and angelic neurobiology.

It's worth quoting at length from his post:

It's 1997. NYNEX is on the verge of being purchased by Bell Atlantic, after which point it will be dissolved in all but name.
But all hell starts breaking loose. Pay phones ring for no reason, and they don't stop. Dead relatives call their families in the middle of the night. People, horrifically, even call themselves – but it's the person they used to be, phoning out of the blue, warning them about future misdirection.
Every once in a while, though, something genuinely bad happens: someone answers the phone... and they go a little crazy.
Thing is – spoiler alert – halfway through the film, the Ghostbusters realize that NYNEX isn't a phone system at all: it's the embedded nervous system of an angel – a fallen angel – and all those phone calls and dial-up modems in college dorm rooms and public pay phones are actually connected into the fiber-optic anatomy of a vast, ethereal organism that preceded the architectural build-up of Manhattan.
Manhattan came afterwards, that is: NYNEX was here first.
It's worth recalling, in fact, that NYNEX – at least according to Wikipedia – actually stood for New York/New England, "with the X representing the unknown future (or 'the uneXpected')." It's like Malcolm X's telephonically inclined, wiry cousin.
So the phone system of Manhattan – all those voices! all those connections! leading one life to another – starts to act up, provoked by its dissolution into Bell Atlantic... and the Ghostbusters are called in to fix it.
Fixing it involves rapid drives from telephone substation to telephone substation, from library to library, all while Dan Ackroyd's character keeps receiving phone calls about a family crisis... his ex-wife is calling... his dad is calling... they're urging him to stop this whole, crazy Ghostbusters business... He starts acting funny. The voices on the phone say strange things. They call at strange hours. He feels kinship with public pay phones; they sometimes ring as he walks past. He tries to call his family back – but they're not answering.
Harold Ramis starts to suspect something.
In the background there are shadowy figures called out to fix transmission lines – but they are actually wiring something up... something big...
The whole movie then leads up to the granddaddy of them all: an electromagnetic confrontation inside the windowless, Brutalist telephone switching tower at 33 Thomas Street (rumored haunt of the ghost of Aleister Crowley).

You can read the rest here, where he goes into more detail that makes the idea sound even more fascinating. I love the idea of the telephone system being haunted, because at this point telephone systems are so ancient that they have begun to seem spooky. That is, they are as ancient and spooky as the NY subway system, which as you'll recall had a role in previous Ghostbusters movies.

I'd love to see a movie like this get made, but I'm dubious about whether it could fly in Hollywood. I could, however, imagine it as a plot arc in Supernatural - if it were the phone exchange in Lawrence, Kansas.

via BLDG BLOGhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/nynex-embedded-angel-of-new-york-city.html

First off, let's remember that Marvel doesn't have access to all of their own characters when it comes to movies; Fox have the rights to the X-Men characters, the Fantastic Four and certain related characters, and the Daredevil franchise, while Sony will doubtless do everything it can to keep hold of the hugely-successful Spider-Man license. So where does that leave Marvel? Well, with plenty of other characters, it seems... Here are our suggestions, complete with high concept pitches to sell them to the execs, and split out into genres:

Action
Comedy
Fantasy
Thriller
Trippy SF

You're welcome, Marvel.

The Eternals
The Pitch: "Learn the true history of humanity!"
The Explanation: Forget Neil Gaiman's recent attempt to restart this franchise and go back to Jack Kirby's original, which said that humanity was just one of three races created by giant, godlike robots called the Celestials, who have come back to Earth to judge us. Oh, and those two other races? They're the idealized Eternals and the evil Deviants, and they're at war over humanity's survival. Imagine a story this epic (and, admittedly, dumb) being given to JJ Abrams and prepare for box office success.
Must Read: The Eternals by Jack Kirby volumes 1 and 2.

Star Brand
The Pitch: "Man has discovered the ultimate weapon. Watch out, Pittsburgh."
The Explanation: Marvel's 1980s attempt at "realism", the New Universe, contained one particular classic, the story of a man who gains the universe's ultimate weapon - a brand that gives its owner unlimited power - and, well, loses his mind in the process, accidentally destroying his home town of Pittsburgh and launching the world into a nuclear winter as a result. We want to see what Charlie Kaufman could do with this, to be honest.
Must Read: Star Brand Classic volume 1 starts the story, but things get more interesting - and more weird - in the not-yet-reprinted later issues.

Machine Man
The Pitch: "What does it mean to be human, when you're not?"
The Explanation: Jack Kirby - yes, him again - created this character, an android just trying to make it in a world of fleshy humans, as part of his continuation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, so you could almost say that he's fated to be a movie star. Downplay the character's various attempts to be a superhero and cut to the core of the character: Kirby's lonely, melancholic outsider wondering what the human condition actually is. Add Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, and let rise, slowly.
Must Read: Currently out of print, you'd be best served by looking for Kirby's short-lived run on the original, 1970s, version of the Machine Man series.

The Winter Soldier
The Pitch: "It's The Manchurian Candidate with cyborgs!"
The Explanation: Ignore the comic version's association with Captain America - He was originally Cap's WWII sidekick Bucky, and took over as Cap after Steve Rogers' assassination a couple of years ago - and focus on the character's origin story: An American soldier, saved from near death by Russians only to be brainwashed and given cyborg implants before being used as an assassin during the Cold War, struggling to break free of his programming. How could that fail? Just get rid of the long hair he had in the comic.
Must Read: Captain America: The Winter Soldier volumes 1 and 2.

SHIELD
The Pitch: "Everything you've ever wanted James Bond movies to be... but better."
The Explanation: It's Marvel's premiere spy agency, made up of grizzled veterans of wars both Cold and World, keeping the world safe with gadgets that would make James Bond jealous: Flying cars? Artificial intelligence decoys? A floating helicopter city headquarters? Even their terrorist nemesis organizations have cool-sounding names: AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics)! Hydra! You'd have to try to mess this one up. Or, you know, cast David Hasselhoff.
Must Read: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD by Jim Steranko.

Agents of Atlas
The Pitch: "The A-Team does Mission Impossible on a much larger scale."
The Explanation: A resurrected FBI agent inherits a terrorist organization and decides to use it to save the world from itself. Oh, and his best friends include a talking gorilla, a siren, a robot and a nice Jewish boy for Uranus. Jeff Parker's wonderful series repurposing old characters from Marvel's pre-Fantastic Four days is funny, smart and, while it may not seem like it at first glance, exactly the kind of thing to make a movie out of. Give it to the Coen brothers and see what happens.
Must Read: The collection of the original 2007 Agents of Atlas series. Although you wouldn't go wrong with the current monthly series, either.

Black Knight
The Pitch: "What if Martin Lawrence's Black Knight movie wasn't played for laughs and didn't suck?"
The Explanation: Simplify this Avenger's backstory considerably, and you've got the plot for a movie: The ancestor of a famous soldier during the time of King Arthur ends up, through magical process, back in that era and creating the legend that his ancestor was supposed to have personified. Yes, it's Hiro's plot from the second season of Heroes, but Black Knight did it first. And, let's face it, better.
Must Read: Essential Defenders volume 1 gives you some of the character's time traveling history.

Killraven
The Pitch: "War Of The Worlds by way of Planet of the Apes."
The Explanation: Set in an alternate world so far out that it may as well be Middle-Earth, Killraven is the story of War of The Worlds Round 2: The Martians from HG Wells' original story have come back and enslaved humanity, forcing breeding so that they can eat babies (Subtle, this isn't) and otherwise just using and abusing humanity as they see fit. Only one man - Jonathan Raven, apparently called "Kill" to his friends - can save the human race in what can only be described as Battleground Earth done right.
Must Read: Essential Killraven volume 1.