The weird claim comes as the movie prepares for limited release this weekend. According to the LA Times' Hero Complex blog, Spielberg was given a DVD of the movie last year as part of a potential Dreamworks purchase of the movie, but odd things led to a worry that the DVD was haunted but worthy of a rave review:

As the story goes, Spielberg had taken a "Paranormal Activity" DVD to his Pacific Palisades estate, and not long after he watched it, the door to his empty bedroom inexplicably locked from the inside, forcing him to summon a locksmith.

While Spielberg didn't want the "Paranormal Activity" disc anywhere near his home — he brought the movie back to DreamWorks in a garbage bag, colleagues say — he very much shared his studio's enthusiasm for director Oren Peli's haunting story about the demonic invasion of a couple's suburban tract house.

Either Spielberg is a great sport trying to get publicity for the low-budget movie, or producing movies like Poltergeist, The Haunting and Monster House have taken their toll on the poor man.

Ghost in the Hollywood machine: 'Paranormal Activity' beat the odds (and gave Spielberg the willies) [LA Times/Hero Complex]

Superman:

James McTeigue, the rumored director of the next Superman movie, continues to make vague, forboding statements. This time, he says he thinks "the culture has sort of changed a little bit around Superman," and the next Superman movie "would have to be something a little darker." [MTV]

Iron Man 2:

We already linked to Kevin Feige's interview with Comic Book Resources where he talks about the Avengers, but there's also a bit where he said the climax to the second Iron Man movie will be a bit more spectacular and large-scale than the first one was. "On the highway and the rooftop in the last movie was great and the connection between Jeff [Bridges] and Robert was great but we wanted to give it a little more spectacle this time around for the finale." [Comic Book Resources]

Jennifer's Body:

Megan Fox sets her tongue on fire in a new image from the film. More images (from this film, as well as some other upcoming fall movies) at the link. [MTV]

Zombieland:

Jesse Eisenberg finally gets some quality time alone with his hot neighbor, in this clip – and if you don't see where this scene is going, you've never seen a zombie film. [MTV]

Spielberg's untitled alien invasion project:

This Dreamworks TV series (or miniseries) for TNT has got to get a catchier title. But anyway, it's filming now in Hamilton, Ontario, with star Noah Wylie playing someone who fights alien invaders. And the spoilery bit is that they're filming a lot at the Royal Botanical Gardens. So is there some kind of plant-themed menace here? Or are they hiding out in a garden? [THR]

Heroes:

The studio sent us a new picture of Hayden Panettiere, looking particularly squashed, from episode 4x02, "Jump, Push, Fall." [NBC]

Also, more about Jayma Mays coming back to the show — apparently, the original plan is: Hiro jumps back to the diner where Charlie works, and this time he succeeds in killing Sylar. This screws up the timeline, but it means Hiro can meet Charlie in a Tokyo bar later. (But this plan may be changed before this storyline gets filmed.) And meanwhile, Claire will be rushing a sorority at her new college. [E! Online]

Warehouse 13:

The guest stars keep coming. Looks like Joe Morton will be guest-starring in episode nine, and Mark Sheppard will pop up in episode 10. Yay! [SpoilerTV]

Supernatural:

Rogue angel Anna will be in the second episode of the new season, and is slated for more appearances after that. [E! Online]

Chuck:

There are no plans for us to find out Sarah Walker's real name, says Yvonne Strahovski. [E! Online]

Actor Matthew Bomer says it's possible he could still return as Bryce, and he doesn't believe Bryce is really dead. [ChuckTV]

True Blood:

Maryann won't stop coming for Sam, because she needs a sacrifice for her god. And Sam thinks maybe he should just give himself up, to spare everyone else in Bon Temps harm. But a savior is riding to Sam's aid. [E! Online]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars:

A new image from season two shows Cad Bane — the bounty hunter so wicked, both his names are naughty — leading his drones. [Lucasfilm]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

We told you last month about Beattie's desire to make a movie based on the popular Halo franchise and we showed you concept art from his pitch last August. But it seems that we weren't the only ones who noticed the passion in the GI Joe writer's words; Steven Spielberg is, according to IESB's sources, in active negotiations to sign onto the project — in the process, resurrecting it from the dead state it's collapsed into — because of Beattie's pitch.

Whether or not this means that the movie will ever get made, remains to be seen — Halo has already defeated Peter Jackson, after all.

Master Chief and HALO May Be Coming to the Big Screen Sooner than Expected with a New Big Name Producer [IESB]

Also joining the cast are actors Jessy Schram, Seychelle Gabriel, and Maxim Knight, who will all tell the story of what happens on Earth after aliens have wiped out most of the human population. They'll most likely be the remnants of the human race, made up of soldiers and citizens.

Bloodgood will play Anne Glass, a therapist working with the children to help them with the trauma of the alien invasion. With her strength and dry sense of humor, Anne, whose husband died during the invasion, becomes a bedrock of the survivors' community and Tom's confidant.

We're rooting for this show to succeed, since television needs some more original science fiction — and anything that lets Spielberg know there's a demand for him to give us more movie aliens is a good thing.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

While the spokesman for TNT - the network behind the show - is keeping quiet about Wyle's involvement, the new as-yet-unnamed drama sounds promising, if familiar: Taking place six months after aliens have invaded Earth and pretty much decimated the human race, the pilot introduces a "ragtag team" (of course) of humans fighting a guerrilla war against the unfriendly ETs. Yes, it's Battlestar Galactica meets Terminator Salvation meets War of The Worlds (with just a hint of Marc Guggenheim's Resurrection comic, for my money), but that doesn't mean that we're not excited about what sounds like the possibility of a grittier take on V. We just hope that Wyle's willing to bring more to the screen than his The Librarian TV movies.

Noah Wyle + Steve Spielberg + Aliens = Big fat hit? [Entertainment Weekly]

Oka tells The Hollywood Reporter that his hours spent playing MMORPGs gave him the idea for his new movie, The Defenders, about a group of teen players who must emerge from behind their avatars to join forces against a real-world menace.

"You can be whoever you want to be," Oka says of gamers. "The question came to me: What if you had to live up to the person you created in the virtual world?" He pitched the idea to genre giants Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (currently riding high with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Star Trek), who had been looking for Spielberg-type teen group adventure movies (à la The Goonies) to produce. Writing the screenplay for The Defenders will be Oka's World of Warcraft pal Gary Whitta (screenwriter of The Book of Eli, next year's postapocalyptic thriller from the Hughes brothers, starring Denzel Washington). DJ Caruso (Eagle Eye) is signed up to direct.

Naturally, there'll be a videogame tie-in.

We hope Oka's gaming buddy writes him a big part in the movie, though its teen focus makes that sound unlikely. And we hope the film turns out to be more than just an excuse to concoct a cool new game. Still, we're all for a modern-day Goonies-type tale. Sloth lives!

We can't tell you how much we want the upcoming Tintin movies to be sci-fi; what genre wouldn't want to claim a couple of movies written by Steven Moffat, directed by Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg and starring (amongst others) Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (as the Thompson Twins) alongside Andy "I was Gollum and King Kong, you know" Serkis, after all? It's like the ideal science-fiction movie... except that, really, Tintin isn't really science fiction.

Oh, we've tried to convince ourselves otherwise, pointing out that he went to the moon in a couple of books, not to mention an appearance by a strange meteor. But the fact remains that, overall, The Adventures of Tintin remains a more grounded series, despite occasionally wandering into stranger territories (Plus, sadly, the movies are apparently based on the very not science fiction books The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure).

And so, we're left looking at the amazing collection of talent behind the Tintin movies, wishing that they could come to their senses and just work on a proper science fiction story instead of this Boy Reporter And Pirates stuff, and also sneakily reporting on it nonetheless by disguising it as a post about being sad that the movies aren't science fiction after all.

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost join 'Tintin' [Variety]

77 stars Freaks and Geeks' immortal John Francis Daley, only he's a lot older and he wants to direct. In a series of misadventures and dramatic conversations about the film's themes, he learns and important lesson and meets the sex offender Spielberg in the process. The film's production has been lengthy and brutal - the original hope was to release the movie before Revenge of Sith in 2005. Karina Longworth of Spout attended the screening:

In its current state, 77 is a good 35 minutes too long, its special effects alternate between inspired and straight dodgy, the performances are brutally uneven, it ends three or four times and it’s so drowned in source cue music that a fair deal of the dialogue is simply unintelligible. It’s a mess....There’s enough plot here for several episodes of CW-quality drama, and aside from the actual trip to Los Angeles, none of it feels like it’s operating at stakes higher than your average episode of teen-friendly TV.

I hate to sound like Harvey Weinstein, but can't they just cut it up and run it on TV where the bad acting and dull setups would fit in better? We do hope it uses this classic footage of a Spielberg interview in that fateful year:

The Nightmare Production of '77 [Spout]

Science fiction helped to invent product placement, with Steven Spielberg's shoehorning of Reese's Pieces into E.T., making them the official candy of penis-fingered growly alien visitors. But that wasn't actually the first instance of product placement in the genre.

What was? It's hard to say, but one of the earliest instances was the overexposure of Sugar Puffs cereal in 1966's Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. The movie version of the classic Doctor Who story starred Peter Cushing as the eccentric time-traveler, who visits a ruined future London where the killing-machine Daleks have taken over. There's no food or clean water, and the survivors of the Dalek attacks live in total squalor. But hey... did we mention Sugar Puffs cereal is sugary and delicious? Sugar Puffs helped to finance the movie in exchange for having their posters visible throughout.

Also, 2001: A Space Odyssey features prominent references to, and fake ads for, Pan-Am, IBM and Howard Johnson. But those were simply companies that director Stanley Kubrick thought would still be around in a few decades. As far as I can find out, no money actually changed hands — in fact, Kubrick contacted 50 companies and asked them to submit logos and designs for what their products might look like in 40 years.

Also this nifty bit of Marlboro promo in a Superman II fight scene predates E.T. by a couple of years. Kneel before our cool, refreshing smokes:

But yes, E.T.'s focus on Reese's Pieces may well have been the first high-profile example of product placement in a science fiction movie. The media reported widely that M&Ms had turned down the chance to be in the mega-hit, and Reese's Pieces reaped some extra publicity from all the coverage. The candy's sales spiked 65 percent after the film came out, and kids wrote to Steven Spielberg with fan art that featured Reese's Pieces prominently:

But there's also a lot of exposure for Coca-Cola, Coors beer, Speak'n'Spell and Pez candy, among other brands, in the movie. Here are some more screen shots:

Around the same time, TV's Knight Rider showed us the way forward in science fictional product placement: people will always want to buy the supercars they see featured on screen. (See below for Transformers and the new K.R.) General Motors gave the show's makers models of the new Trans Am, which they decked out as KITT, and people rushed to buy their own KITTs.

But E.T. and Knight Rider were like babies, or maybe monks, compared to the Back To The Future trilogy. Seriously, google "Back To The Future worst product placement" and set aside an hour or two to look at all the lists of the "worst movie product placement of all time" that include the BTTF trilogy. References to Pepsi are jammed into the first two films (like when Marty tries to order a Pepsi Free in 1955), his mom thinks he's named Calvin Klein, and the films ram Nike, Pizza Hut, AT&T, Hasbro and Mattel down your throat. (The DeLorean gets a free pass, because it's actually funny.)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home took advantage of its present-day setting to pimp Michelob beer — the official beer of the Federation — and of course, Scotty gets to know an Apple Macintosh better. The Trek franchise liked that product-placement money so much, Kirk and his crew go camping in Levis jeans in Star Trek V. Meanwhile, Apple got sluttier and sluttier, getting some first-class pimping in Mission Impossible and Independence Day — where a Mac notebook is the key to stopping the alien invaders. And then in Blade Trinity, one character goes to the iTunes music store to assemble a playlist for her ipod, which she listens to while fighting vampires. There's also a nice Apple plug in I Am Legend.

Another movie which wins a spot in the product-placement hall of shame is Demolition Man. Sylvester Stallone gets woken up in the future, and finds that Taco Bell/Pizza Hut has won the "franchise wars" and now all restaurants are Pizza Huts:

One of the first television series to be accused of shoving consumer items in your face was Babylon 5, which stuck a gigantic Zima sign over the alien boxing ring in the episode "TKO." Series creator J. Michael Straczynski insisted the show got "not a dime" for the Zima plug, and it was just for the lolz.

Men In Black got a lot of flak for its relentless pushing of the Ray-Ban Predator 2 sunglasses, which tripled in sales to almost $5 million after the film came out. And Men In Black II is another proud moment for product whoring. An alien intruder arrives on Earth and needs to assume a form to confuse us humans. So of course her/its eye lights on a Victoria's Secret ad:

And then there's the famous taxi chase in The Fifth Element, which leads up to the cops getting showered with McDonald's cartons. Good thing they still have Mickey D's in this dystopian future:

One trend in the 2000s has been movies featuring fake advertisements for real products as part of the plot, sort of a throwback to 2001. Who helped pioneer this? None other than Steven "Reese's Pieces" Spielberg, who has Tom Cruise walk through a mall full of personalized ads in Minority Report.

Michael Bay also crams The Island full of fake ads, including a Chanel ad that stars the woman Scarlet Johnasson was cloned from.

I, Robot pushed Converse's Chuck Taylor shoes so much, there's a whole Chuck Taylor web page devoted to the film. (The movie gets four Chucks out of five.) I have blotted this movie out of my memory, but apparently all Will Smith does in it is wave his "antique" Chuck Taylors around and talk about how fast he can run away from the killer robots, thanks to his Chucks. If you saw this movie and liked the shoes, could you buy your own pair? Gosh, I think so!

I could be here all day discussing the wealth of car product placement in recent movies. The Lost World: Jurassic Park features a new kind of Mercedes Benz SUV, and Steven "man-whore" Spielberg lovingly, frames a shot so you can see the Mercedes logo really clearly. That Steven. The Matrix Reloaded is such a great Cadillac ad, with its freeway chase, that the DVD even has a featurette about the product placement. Terminator 3 is brought to you by Lexus and Toyota. I Am Legend is one big ad for the Ford Mustang. Transformers is basically built around promoting GM's latest car models, and the second film is already getting buzz around the new Chevy Volt and Corvette models. The Dark Knight is plastered with Ford. We have a new Knight Rider show, which is basically a Ford Mustang infomercial as the car transforms into different Ford models. Fringe is also chock full of Ford.

Heroes has had product placement for Sprint, Apple, Dell and other brands, but also especially Nissan.

A new growing category of product placement in science fiction, rivaling cars and computers: phones. After all, if you're under attack by aliens, you really need to be able to reach your comrades in a hurry. Hence, Jericho's and Heroes' constant whoring for Sprint, Superman Returns' constant Samsung and Virgin whoring, Cloverfield's Nokia love, etc. etc.

It's pretty amazing. Judging from our research, there's been more product placement, and more blatant product placement, in 2008 than in the past few years combined. We could literally spend an entire post just listing all the product placement this year. And it's getting way more blatant, especially on television. As we mentioned above, Sarah Connor Chronicles set a new high-water mark with its hour-long Dodge Ram commercial last week. Smallville devoted an entire episode last spring to Stride gum, and how it can turn you into a superhero. And then there's Eureka, which has apparently been finding ways to feature Degree For Men in every. single. episode. this season, including the one where Degree provides protection from a lethally hot second sun.

Where will it end? How much lower can we go? In the interests of ironic dystopian amusement, I can hardly wait to find out.

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

The interesting thing is that Chocky is actually the perfect model for Spielberg to project all of his absentee father concerns onto. For those who haven't read the novel, it centers around a father who slowly comes to realize that his son's odd behavior has less to do with his own role in the child's development and more to do with the fact that his son's imaginary friend is actually a disembodied alien consciousness living inside his brain... all of which you're already imagining being accompanied by a John Williams score and personified by a soft-focus Paul Giamatti and some random Culkin kid, I'm sure. But that doesn't mean that that's a good thing — I'd want to see the book being brought to the screen by someone who'd be able to bring out the unsettling qualities about it, the uncertainty and horror of having an alien living inside your son's head, and that's not someone who replaced guns with cellphones in a 20-year-old film so as not to scare the kids.

(It's also not you, M. Night Shyamalan. So don't get any ideas.)

My one hope is that the confusion over exactly which studio actually owns Spielberg's Dreamworks properties right now will be enough to convince him that it's not worth the trouble — or else, that Tintin gets back on its feet quick enough to fill up his schedule, saving us from a cute Chocky and giving us a new Stephen Moffat movie in the process.

Steven Spielberg's kidding again [Hollywood Reporter]

On the topic of a third Doctor Who motion picture, Moffat told the gathering:

As long as it was great and fantastic then yeah. But a film is on [for] 90 minutes and that is not as important as the series. But as long as it doesn't get in the way of the show we could do it.

He said that when he bailed on his commitment to write TIntin movies to take over Doctor Who, director Steven Spielberg told him "The world would be a poorer place without Doctor Who."

Moffat, who devoted a lot of his recent mega-library two-parter to lecturing against spoilers, had a message for those of us who spread plot info in advance: "Shut up! Just shut up!" He said it's pretty easy to get spoilers on Doctor Who, because they practically publish the scripts and they film in public. But you should exercise some self-control, let you become "that bore in the pub who delivers the punchline of a joke a second before it is delivered."

Someone asked if the Doctor would ever be an old man again, as he was in the early years. And he said no, because the new amped-up filming schedule is hard enough for a "superfit David Tennant" and would kill an older lead actor. "For Doctor Who to turn into an old man, you'd be pissed off," he added. "Even William Hartnell had trouble back then, he was often ill and he forgot his lines. I think the Doctor will always be about 40." [Guardian]

Given the choice between taking the reins of Doctor Who and fulfilling his contract to write the second Tintin movie for Spielberg and Jackson was a no-brainer, according to Moffat:

I know a lot of people won't understand it but I've been dreaming about writing for Doctor Who since I was seven. There are no bad feelings between Spielberg and me, but Doctor Who has to come before Hollywood... I could not work on the second Tintin film and work on Doctor Who. So I chose Doctor Who. Steven is a fan and he understood my passion for the series completely.

Moffat, who's already written the first of a planned Tintin trilogy, was originally contracted to write the first two before being offered the Who gig. In a classic British tabloid attempt, the Mail of Sunday story quotes an anonymous (and potentially fictional) Hollywood insider to give the story some more spice:

No one walks away from Spielberg and all that money for a show no one has heard of. I mean, what is this doctor show about? It sounds a little silly.

More silly than a Belgian boy reporter and his cute little dog hanging out with alcoholic sea captains and having adventures on the moon? Somehow, I don't think so, Johnny Hollywood.

£500,000 Mr Spielberg? Sorry, I've got a date with the Beeb, says the new Dr Who writer [Mail on Sunday]

It's happened to all of us. We read a novel that blows us away, and a few years later its title appears on posters underneath the face of Harrison Ford or Natalie Portman. But at some inevitable point in that darkened theater, the movie takes a turn we didn't expect. Our eyebrows go up, our lips turn down, and the disappointment begins. Maybe the wrong director or writer can curse an otherwise excellent project — or maybe some things were just never meant to be filmed. Here are 10 books that we think should never have been committed to celluloid.

DUNE by Frank Herbert

There's no doubt about it: Herbert's Dune is a bona fide classic. It won the first ever Nebula award and the 1966 Hugo award, and most consider it to be the best-selling sci-fi novel in history. Set in a future where a feudal empire controls the planets of the unvierse, the novel tells the story of young nobleman Paul Atreides and his family's rule of the desert planet Arrakis. Arrakis is the only source of "melange," an addictive spice that lengthens lives and makes interstellar travel possible. Herbert's book explores the power struggles that arise around the spice, and the complexity of human society that exists even in the far future.

Big shoes to fill for a film producer. Yet in 1984 David Lynch wrote and directed a movie version of Dune, rescuing it from development hell and plunging it into bad-adaptation hell. Reviews panned the movie — Roger Ebert deemed it "the worst movie of the year," and others expressed similar disgust. Despite the movie's 40-million-dollar budget, its effects were notably cheap, and the screenplay did not hold up to the challenge of translating a four-hundred-page book to screen. You'd think you couldn't go wrong with Patrick Stewart, Sting, and Jürgen Prochnow, but evidently you very much can.

FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury

Who could forget Fahrenheit 451, "the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns …"? Bradbury's classic 1953 novel takes place in a dystopian future where television has entirely replaced the printed word, and firemen burn books instead of saving lives. The author himself has stated that the point of the story was to showcase how owning a TV set can destroy all interest in literature — so making a movie version seems pretty damn ballsy to say the least.

With that in mind, the 1966 film, helmed by French icon François Truffaut, seems doomed from the start. It certainly didn't help that there were many notable omissions, like the disappearance of the novel's nuclear war (which is, let's face it, a pretty big cut). Julie Christie plays the main character's wife and his illicit lover, which adds an extra level of pointless weirdness. The bottom line is, there are plenty of books for which you can tell your friends to "just watch the movie." But in the case of Fahrenheit 451, that probably makes you kind of fascist. Just sayin'.

V FOR VENDETTA by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

The book is probably one of the best graphic novels ever produced. Detailing the adventures of a masked anarchist and his sweet blond protégée, Moore's writing also delves far deeply beyond his two main characters into complex themes of fascism, anarchy, identity, and the meaning of life itself. Nobody is without a story to tell: Even his villains are creepily sympathetic. By the end of the comic, every reader will have at least one Lloyd image burned in their brain, and be wondering — with no small amount of fear — exactly how much control their government does have.

Enter the movie. For the Wachowski brothers, the boys who gave us the two-thirds-sucky Matrix trilogy, setting this story to film was easy. They just had to cut out all of the character depth, change Moore's nuanced portrayal of British fascism to the cookie-cutter Hollywood standby of Suited White Men, and (of course) turn the subtle, understated relationship of the main characters into romantic pining. But hey, at least they got the costume right.

A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle

Though it's often marketed as a young-adult fantasy novel, make no mistake: This book is without a doubt a sci-fi classic for all generations, an incredible tale that deftly blends science, speculation, and humanity. L'Engle's 1962 story invented the concept of a "tesseract" — the fifth dimension, a phenomenon that folds the fabric of space and time. It introduced a mother who cooks dinner on a Bunsen burner, a father whose research leaves him imprisoned on another planet, and a brother and sister whose loving relationship turns out to be the most important thing in the universe.

Mostly we make an effort to ignore it, but it's true: Many of the great sci-fi writers were (and are) better at dreaming up nifty science ideas than they were at weaving together a compelling story. L'Engle, however, belongs in no such group. Her work was never meant to be a crappy Disney movie, and yet in 2003, a crappy Disney made-for-TV adaptation appeared that one critic described as "lightweight, saccharine, rather slow going most of the way, and somewhat simplistic" as well as "sometimes clunky, and... often uninspiring". Let us speak no more about it.

THE MINORITY REPORT by Philip K. Dick

Dick's 1956 short story introduced the chilling concept of "precrime," a police system whose officers arrest would-be murderers, rapists, and thieves before they get a chance to do their dirty deeds. His futuristic New York City is a world where three future-seeing mutants control who goes to prison and who doesn't, and free will is a gray area — a luxury that not everyone possesses. One veteran cop, after seeing a prediction that he will kill someone he doesn't even know, is having none of it.

So what did Steven Spielberg's 2002 movie add, besides a gross eye transplant? Well, for one, it brought in Tom Cruise — balding, out-of-shape 50-year-olds are never attractive narrators as far as Hollywood's concerned, no matter what they might be able to share with us in real life. The setting's different, too, and names have been changed, but at least it presents the idea with a lot more nifty special effects and a lot less storytelling, right? And that, my friends, is frighteningly endemic of the print-to-film adaptation.

I, ROBOT by Isaac Asimov

This is a revolutionary sci-fi classic, a collection of nine short stories exploring the limitations and dangers of human-created artificial intelligence. Asimov's 1950 publication of I, Robot established the Three Laws of Robotics, supposedly unbreakable rules which govern the actions of these metal beings, and his short stories read like the best sci-fi mind puzzles you will ever find.

2004's movie adaptation was undeniably well done, and it ended up being one of the best of the year — due in no small part to Jeff Vintar's tight script and the total awesomeness of Will Smith and Chi McBride. Asimov certainly meant to get us thinking, so one could imagine he'd be pleased that his work inspired a smart sci-fi thriller like this. As it happens, however, the main plot of the movie is actually lifted from a 1939 short story by Eando Binder that bears the same name; Asimov's publisher gave his collection the same title, against Asimov's wishes. The Three Laws of Robotics were only added to the script after the film's producers secured the rights to Asimov's anthology. This project, then, has been plagued from the beginning by intellectual property snafus: It's a confused collaboration of several minds, and it seems that not all the minds involved were properly credited. And since it's caused most of the problems, can we let go of that title already?

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer

It's a crusty old staple of hard sci-fi, a 1933 novel that first saw print as a magazine serial. Wylie and Balmer's story begins with a South African astronomer, Sven Bronson, who discovers that a pair of rogue planets are headed for Earth's orbit. Only a small group of scientists believe his claim; they work to build two ships that will carry the beginnings of a new human settlement to one of the rogue planets, which is projected to replace Earth in its orbit. This is the kind of pre-NASA speculation that works best in old-fashioned typewriter font on yellowed paper.

But of course, Hollywood felt the need to put it in Technicolor. The film adaptation did win an Oscar for special effects, but it was 1951, so you decide for yourself if that's impressive. The movie's story doesn't so much explore sci-fi ideas as showcase human hysteria when tidal waves sweep the Earth and survivors are chosen by lottery — and it naturally also allows for the most groan-worthy of romance subplots. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the way the film's hero pushes his handicapped financier off the boarding ramp as the ship leaves, despite the fact that he funded the entire project. "Politically incorrect" doesn't begin to cover it. Apparently there's a remake of the film scheduled for a 2010 release — isn't one mistake supposed to teach you a lesson?

STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein

War sucks, and Heinlein proved it with his 1960 Hugo-award-winning novel. Told from the point of view of Johnnie Rico, a young soldier, this futuristic tale explores a world where only veterans can vote or hold public office — and where humankind battles endlessly with giant bugs. Rico's flashbacks to his time at school, and his experiences in the military, serve to illustrate the total destruction that war causes.

In the book, the bugs barely ever appear; Rico views them only through a giant battle suit. For the 1997 film adaptation, though, that was not an option — after all, there ain't a moviegoer born of woman who doesn't want to see giant grasshoppers. Special effects left little screen time for Heinlein's philosophy discussions, but director Paul Verhoeven admitted he never got past the first few chapters of the novel anyway. If he hated the story that much, what do you think was keeping him from writing and directing his own friggin' screenplay?

THE POSTMAN by David Brin

Originally published as two novellas (both of which won Hugo awards), this post-apocalyptic story grapples with the concepts of survivalism, civilization, and hope. In a world destroyed not by disasters but by its own people, one man discovers a worn-out United States Postal Service uniform — and discovers that his fellow humans are so desperate they'll even take hope from that. The complete novel, published as the two novellas combined, was named the best science fiction novel of the year in 1986 in the John W. Campbell awards.

And then Kevin Costner decided to direct and star in a film adaptation. The 1997 story, while still broadcasting a message of hope, centered that message more around the Postman as a war hero — and don't forget his tagalong baby mama. The New York Times blasted the movie for its "bogus sentimentality" and "mawkish jingoism," but Roger Ebert warned that we "shouldn't blame them for trying." Well, I think perhaps we should.

THIS ISLAND EARTH by Raymond F. Jones

The year 1952, I'm sure, saw many new creations in sci-fi, but I'm willing to bet that almost none of them were as silly as the interociter — an alien transmission device, which despite its apparent sophistication is about as big as a truck. Jones gave us the interociter in his novel This Island Earth, which told of an alien race that recruited Earth's greatest thinkers for a group called the "Peace Engineers." Not surprisingly, the "Peace Engineers" were actually helping the aliens wage an intergalactic war. On a planet that had already seen the genius of 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still, this should not have seemed a good candidate for a film adaptation.

Since the movie version of This Island Earth now gets most of its viewings in the form of Mystery Science Theater 3000's lampoon, the folly of bringing it to film is assured. Plastic skulldomes, toilet thrones, and raspberry bushes are not the stuff of eternal movie classics. Before you adapt a book, my advice is to run it through a quick Mike-Joel-Crow-Tom Servo test. You might be surprised how much money you save on camera equipment and actors.

There's a lot to love in this movie if you've been missing the nerd swagger of Indiana Jones, the archeology professor with fists of steel and a lust for treasure. Roughly two decades have passed in real time and movie time, so director Steven Spielberg has fun with period scene-setting just to let us know we've moved from fighting the Nazis in 1938 to fighting the Russkies in 1957. Yes, you'll get to see Indy tangle with a Soviet ninja dominatrix (Cate Blanchette), paranoid government agents, and even a goddamn atomic bomb blast — and it's all perfectly good fun. Nothing brilliant, but nothing boring either. The main plot arc, which involves a crazy search across South America for the remains of classic big-headed aliens, is an homage to 1950s pop culture the way earlier Indy movies were to 1930s and 40s adventure tales.

And here's where you can see some serious X-Files stuff bubbling up, because the aliens in Crystal Skull aren't just your typical 50s invaders. They're more like X-Files creatures, connected with ancient native mythology and coveted by secret government agents. Their crystalline skeletons give people visions, and have strange unscientific magnetic powers. Supposedly if the "crystal skull" of the film's title is reunited with its crystal skeleton in some secret place that requires lots of puzzle-solving to reach, there will be some sort of singularity. I kept wanting Scully to pop up at some point and whack everyone upside the head with a rationality stick. Or a dick joke.

What I'm trying to say is that while the Crystal Skull is in many ways a successful reimagining of the franchise, it also lacks punch. Sure, there are totally cool killer ant swarms and zooming over giant waterfalls and lots of gesturing at ancient maps. But are no crap-that's-amazing moments, and certainly nothing that will make you hoot with admiration over an artfully-executed genre satire. The satire, such as it is, is just a sad imitation of the X-Files, which is even more sad because the X-Files movie will probably be less imaginative than Crystal Skull.

The only edge to the film is a clumsy, knee-jerk liberal subplot about how the evil U.S. government suspects everyone of being part of the Red Menace — even Indy! Sounds just like the evil, suspicious U.S. government today! Wow, thanks for the commentary, but honestly if there had just been cooler aliens or a weirder plot I would have been a lot happier.

Don't get me wrong: the flick is definitely worth seeing, and you won't be disappointed unless you are expecting Raiders of the Lost Ark. Star Ford can still lay on the charm, even though the film keeps tiresomely reminding us that he's REALLY OLD, and Karen Allen returns as his still-tough-as-nails and seriously cute ex-girlfriend Marion (she who could drink Siberians under the table in Raiders). Even the ordinarily-heinous Shia LaBoeuf is tolerable here, partly because he's dressed as Marlon Brando from 50s juvenile delinquent classic The Wild One, and partly because there's a long jungle chase sequence where his crotch is repeatedly and resoundingly slapped by tree branches.

There's nothing better on a weekend afternoon than being stalked through the deep jungle by a hot Ukrainian spy while you quest for the lost city of El Dorado and a bunch of crystal alien skeletons. But you might not really want to do it again. And that's exactly the thing about the new Indiana Jones flick: good for one afternoon of diversion, but not much more than that.

[Tech Crunch]

The original rough draft for Jurassic park IV was scrapped due to the fact that that plot line involved dinosaurs made into government warriors armed with guns. These GI Dinos were met with overall disdain by pretty much everyone on the internet and rumor is, it's been heavily reworked. [TV Guide via Bloody Disgusting]

E.T. is penis-shaped for no reason. His face looks like a genital. His neck elongates. And there is NO good reason. You think kids won't notice the penis thing? Give me a break. When I was a kid, that was like all we talked about. I'm fine with throwing penis jokes and fart jokes into kid movies — that's the stuff of life. But doing it without any self-consciousness? Makes director Steven Spielberg look like an amateur. Makes the movie even dumber because kids can actually legitimately make fun of it for containing penises that the grownups DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE WERE THERE. C'mon grownups — get with it.

E.T. is too cute and too ugly at the same time. We've already established that E.T. looks like an unattractive genital. At the same time, he is way to freakin cute. What the hell with the waddling and cutsey voice and big giant eyes. Big beating heart? Gross. I am barfing now. Plus that egregious "looks like a toy" scene, where he hides in with the dolls? Puh-leez.

To make matters worse, the 20th Anniversary Edition of ET was redone with CGI and censorship. OK, look, grownups — trying to fix up an already too-cute/too-ugly E.T. by adding crappy CGI ain't going to cut it. Seriously, he just looks way lamer. Meanwhile, Spielberg decided to clean up the movie by replacing the bad guy's guns with radios in one scene (what? you think kids don't know those are really guns?) and then taking out the ONE funny line in the whole movie, where Elliot calls his brother "penis breath." So you take out the one intentionally-funny penis reference, but leave in the penis-shaped alien? WTF, people?

Power of healing sucks. E.T.'s one super-power is healing and making flowers grow. LAME. Healing is totally great and all, but how about combining it with the power to blow shit up or shoot giant knives through his long froggy fingers? Or maybe the power to build big lasers that kill the bad guys with their "radios."

Too similar to Old Yeller. Does it really count as a scifi movie if all you've done is take the plot of Old Yeller — boy meets dog, boy loses dog, boy learns life lesson — and transpose it onto an alien crash-landed on Earth plot? Why not just go see Old Yeller if you want to see cute little boys crying over nonhuman creatures? Just because E.T. helps Elliot fly on his bicycle doesn't make him a better dog than Old Yeller, OK?

Spawned worst videogame ever made. The E.T. videogame wasn't just the most hideous thing ever mde for the Atari 2600 — it was the worst game ever made in the entire world. Rumor has it that it sold so badly that most of the cartridges were turned into landfill.

Product placement frenzy makes movie dated and ridiculous. In their craven desire to get commercial sponsors for E.T., producers decided to use very specific brands in the movie. Elliot feeds E.T. Reeses Pieces (at that time a new candy), and E.T. uses a Speak and Spell handheld "game" (also new in the early 80s) to communicate with his alien buddies. Having these very 80s-specific products in the movie pushes it into retro-cheese territory rather than "movie for all ages" like, well, Old Yeller. I got a hint for you: If you want kids to enjoy your movie for decades, don't use it to advertise products that will look so retarded to kids twenty years later that they won't be able to decide whether to laugh at the penis-headed alien or the lameass Speak and Spell toy.

Two decades worth of kid-alien space movies I blame E.T. for all those crappy kid-alien movies (and ALF), but not for XTRO, which is like the very best alien-kid movie ever.

Neil Diamond wrote a song about E.T. called "Heartlight." Did Nirvana write a song about E.T.? Did Black Sabbath or Big Daddy Kane or Run DMC? No. Neil fucking Diamond, people. I rest my case.

At the end of this scene — which is totally worth watching in its entirety to see the full, beautiful goofiness of UFO representations — you can see the three lights in the sky separating and zooming into the clouds. Looks amazingly similar to the video of the Phoenix lights above.

I have never understood why people assume that UFOs will be covered in lights when they visit Earth, unless it's because Steven Spielberg's vision in Close Encounters basically convinced them that it makes the most sense for aliens to arrive covered in visible light spectrum. I sure hope the next Phoenix encounter includes some music too! Bee bee bee boop boop!

And he wants to turn it into a live-action 3D movie. Written by Jamie Moss, whose only other work was on Street Kings, a cop actioner currently in theaters. I've actually been wanting to see Street Kings (Keanu Reeves is not Moss' fault, after all) and I like the idea of bringing in a writer with a flair for cop action. Ghost in the Shell is, after all, a cop movie. The main plot arc involves solving a crime of the future: non-consensual brain hacking. And I'm willing to admit Spielberg did make one hell of a slick, menacing dystopia in A.I. — as long as you ignore the egregiously awful ending.

Still, I'm worried the film will lose its freaky philosophical edge when translated into Spielbergese. This is a complicated story based on a famous manga series, which has spawned several movie sequels, games, and TV shows in Japan. Fans are going to have high expectations, and throwing lots of Dreamworks money at the movie to meet those expectations isn't the right way to go. Sure we want to see some awesome effects, and a fully-realized New Port City. But we really need good writing and plotting to make sure nothing is lost in translation.

Dreamworks Doing 3D Live Action Version of Ghost in the Shell [Quiet Earth]