Best:

10. The Road

One of the most significant SF-themed literary novels of the past decade, Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic epic, was adapted into an arthouse film starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. And while the novel's themes didn't quite work as well in a movie format, and we had serious issues with the movie's sentimentality, we still found the movie's post-apocalyptic vision compelling. In an era where the apocalypse strikes inside cinema with alarming regularity, this was the grimmest and most unflinching look at a world where every ounce of green, and almost every spark of human kindness, has been destroyed.

9. Gamer

This film, on the other hand, may have boasted slightly less of a literary pedigree. But if you love over-the-top, crazy exploitation films with a satirical edge — and we certainly do — then this tale of remote-controlled killers and sexbots will surprise you. It's easy to see why Gamer never got its props: It's crude, nasty, and full of day-glo wigs. But its plot, about a new biotech called "Nanex" that can replace your brain cells with remote-control devices that can never be removed, is creepy. And the architect of this evil scheme to own your brain? Is Dexter (Michael C. Hall). Who does a song-and-dance number about how much he enjoys yanking your synapses around. Really.

8. Coraline

Veering back towards literary adaptations, there's Henry Sellick's gorgeous version of Neil Gaiman's Hugo award-winning horror/fantasy book. Forget Avatar — this was the most visually striking use of 3-D this year, and it was in the service of a story that felt like a classic fairy tale.

7. Drag Me To Hell

Thank goodness Sam Raimi decided to take a break from Spider-Man movies and return to his horror roots, with this amazingly snarky, Evil Dead-esque journey into the heart of class insecurity. Charlene, a young loan officer at a bank, is desperate to advance up the corporate ladder and escape her hick past, not to mention impress her boyfriend's snobbish family. So she decides to deny a home loan to an old woman — who turns out to be the wrong person to mess with. As we said in our review, "Like all good horror, Drag Me To Hell takes real-life fears, dresses them up in blood-soaked costumes, and sets them running."

6. Paranormal Activity

As we mentioned, this was the year of low-budget movies that focused on a few unforgettable characters, and this film managed to turn a low budget into maximum scariness. As we wrote in our review, "Nothing ever felt like padding or gratuitous "we're going to amp up the tension with cheap jolts" bullshit. The terror was raw and real - all the more so because it was so understated." But the real horror in this film is the dysfunctional relationship at its core, between a woman stalked by a demon and the boyfriend whose antics wind up making things much worse.

5. Zombieland

This post-apocalyptic comedy swept us away with its cool style points — Columbus' rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse, Tallahassee's creative zombie-killing techniques — but it really won us over with its clever romance between Columbus and Wichita, and the way it conveyed the experience of geeky coming of age against a chaotic backdrop. Like all the best road movies, it's about the journey.

4. Avatar

James Cameron's long-awaited out-of-body-experience movie was everything we were expecting: It was just as clunky and preachy as his original "scriptment" suggested it would be, and the native peoples were just as much of a "noble savage" stereotype as we'd expected. But it was just as beautiful and thrilling as we'd expected, too. People have been in the habit, lately, of saying that Avatar has great special effects and a terrible story — but in addition to the incredible CG world-building, the film also does have some thrilling performances from Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington, in particular. It's not just the cool flying dragons that suck you in — it's the characters.

3. Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry's optimistic space opera needed a long rest after the blunders that were Enterprise and the last two movies. In fact, we weren't sure Trek's tired old saws ever needed to be brought back. But J.J. Abrams somehow managed to make Trek seem fresh again, mostly by giving Kirk and Spock a new backstory. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves caring what happened to these guys again, and the scene where Sarek finally admits he married Amanda because he loved her is surprisingly powerful. For the first time in too long, Star Trek became a universe where anything could happen — even the destruction of Vulcan. Who knew Trek could be unpredictable?

2. Moon

Sam Rockwell brought enough conviction and character for twenty actors to this story of a lonely worker trapped in a lunar mining outpost. His loneliness and brushes with madness are captivating — and that's even before there turn out to be two of him at once. By the time this psychological thriller unravels into a story of an evil corporation treating its workforce as a disposable commodity (literally), we're so wound up into Sam Bell's loneliness and yearning to go home that the fate of both Sams becomes more urgent than the fate of entire worlds.

1. District 9

It's easy to think of this film as just a polemic against Apartheid and the mistreatment of refugees — but the story of aliens herded into shantytowns is much more than that. The story of Wikus Van De Merwe, a total bastard who enjoys watching alien children pop like popcorn, feels uncomfortably like our story. After Wikus gets infected with some kind of alien goo, he starts to discover what it's like to be one of the downtrodden aliens, but this revelation doesn't particularly make him a more noble person, at least not for most of the movie. Brilliant production design adds to this film's sense of stark realism, and even some ugly Nigerian stereotypes fail to detract from the film's unforgettable portrait of human cruelty and alien family values. This was the film, more than other, that stuck in our heads long after watching it.

Honorable mentions: I really wanted to give a shout out to Men Who Stare At Goats and Push, two films that got unfairly panned this past year. Goats is way more fun than people gave it credit for, and had occasional moments of total brilliance, especially from Jeff Bridges. Push is stylishly shot in Hong Kong, full of homages to Wong Kar-Wai, and features world-builiding about mutant powers and secret organizations that feels lived-in and clever.

Worst:

10. Surrogates

This film could have been terrific — based on a brilliant graphic novel written by Robert Venditti, this "shut-ins go out in robot bodies" epic is a potent metaphor for our relationship to technology. Unfortunately, the film version, starring Bruce Willis, is a cluttered, clunky mess. It's every dumb action-movie set piece jammed together with bits of chewing gum, plus an incredibly preachy screenplay that doesn't trust the audience to reach conclusions on its own. And that's really the worst sin a dystopian movie can commit: force-feeding us messages, because the dystopia isn't powerful enough to reach us on its own.

9. The Fourth Kind

Even as Paranormal Activity was making the Blair Witch-style "real-life recordings" vibe seem fresh again, The Fouth Kind was trying to pass off fake alien abduction tapes as real, and unfortunately the film-makers put more effort into trying to hoodwink the press than they did into crafting a compelling movie. The actual film is a mish-mash of bad "archival" footage, unscary alien abductions, and flaky plot twists like the idea that a professor can speak ancient Sumerian because he's seen some texts.

8. New Moon

There's something to be said for a book and movie franchise that has converted so many new people, especially girls, into SF/fantasy lovers. But still, this movie slathered us with cheese and bored us with long stretches of Bella moping after Edward, who's decided they can't be together. Edward starts appearing to Bella, Obi Wan-like, as she becomes an adrenaline junkie and runs around with shirtless Jacob. The moments where the film winks at the audience, or veers into outright self-parody, can't quite make up for the goopiness of much of the rest.

7. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

If we had a crane with a camera on it following us around all the time, we would feel tempted to look up at the ceiling and howl as well. Where can we get one of those? The fourth film in the X-Men saga continued X3's slide into mediocrity, with too many random mutant cameos and a campy mutant self-discovery plot that felt instantly forgettable, even without a memory-erasing magic bullet. At no point in this endless film do Logan and Sabretooth feel like brothers, and we don't really care which one of them kills the other. Is there any way that Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool movie can make up for this disaster? We can only hope.

6. The Time Traveler's Wife

We loved Audrey Niffenegger's clever, disciplined time-travel novel just as much as we hated the schlocky, smug movie version. The film excised some of the coolest parts of the novel, and substituted a lot of cookie-cutter romantic-dramedy whininess and angst. What was a classic love story, as well as a insightful look into the way in which we're all time-travelers because we're constantly reliving our pasts and dreaming of our futures, becomes a mindless (and heartless) exercise in pouting as character development. All the more disappointing, because it had such great material to work with.

5. 2012

It's tempting to give this film a free pass, because who expected greatness, or anything other than explosions, from Roland Emmerich's umpteenth disaster film? But it's worth calling out this film for its brain-dead destruction porn and focus on special effects to the total exclusion of characters, or anything really. Bad science, bad writing, bad acting... but most of all, it's kind of boring, and you really have to turn off your brain to enjoy any of it. To quote from some of the comments in our review: "I didn't care who lived or died," "I felt dead inside," "My problem with this movie isn't the rampant destruction, but the boringness in between."

4. Knowing

Making fun of a Nic Cage movie these days almost feels like challenging a dyslexic to a spelling bee. But really. This film was so insultingly bad, that we can't let it slide. Cage plays a college professor, whose idea of teaching astrophysics is to hold model planets and say stuff like, "Hey, man. The sun is like, really, really hot. Did you ever think that maybe things happen for a reason?" It's like stoner astrophysics 101. And then he gets hold of a time capsule from the 1950s that's full of numbers which somehow predict every disaster, including the end of the world. Even if you can ignore coincidences like a plane crashing next to the highway where Cage is driving, you'll be clutching your head by the time this movie's final plot twist is revealed. If this is Knowing, then ignorance really is bliss.

3. Pandorum

Zombies infest a spaceship — how could that be bad? Well, um... how about if it's zombies on a spaceship where Dennis Quaid is doing a crappy pastiche of Fight Club? How then? We never knew space madness could be so boring. Actually, the biggest problem with this film isn't Quaid's endless freak-out, or the random cannibal guy who's diagrammed the entire plot in graffiti, it's the boredom. The makers of the film seem to have mixed up suspense with "nothing happening for long stretches," as our heroes skulk around dark tunnels endlessly. It could have been so much better, if the themes of reclaiming your pride as an officer and sticking together had been foregrounded. Even a cool ending can't save this stew.

2. Terminator Salvation

We debated whether to include T4 among the worst letdowns of the past decade — but there were already so many from 2009 on the list. It's shameful to admit it now, but we expected more from this film, thanks to the reunion of The Dark Knight's star and writer, Christian Bale and Jonathan Nolan. Instead, what we got was the giant head of Helena Bonham Carter delivering exposition. Sam Worthington does his best with the role of Marcus Wright, who discovers he's a cyborg, but he's hobbled by a nonsensical plot. And Bale is a major disappointment as John Connor — it's hard to believe anyone could make us miss Nick Stahl.

1. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

We celebrated this film as the ultimate apotheosis of Bunuel-style surrealism, but if you're expecting it to make a lick of sense, you might as well expect ants to climb out of your hand. Honestly, 2012 only wishes it could be as dumb, as massive — and yes, as boring — as this clunker. These robots can turn themselves into anything — except for compelling characters. And unlike 2012, in which the action set pieces are the punctuation in between long boring sequences, this film's action sequences are the most boring part, because it's hard to tell what's supposed to be going on, and we don't really care anyway. If 2009 was the year that giant CG rainbow showers finally conquered movie screens, then Transformers 2 was the worst offender.

Peter Rubin, whose Iron Rooster Studios provided concept designs for Surrogates, explains his concept for a lower class, industrial surrogate:

Early on during Surrogates, when it was just basically me and the director, (the writer's strike was still on) I proposed that there be a class of surries designed to serve in manual labor jobs, or even low-end clerical posts... the humans at the other end wouldn't be highly paid, and might not even own their own stimchairs. Nevertheless, they would have minimal luxuries of the sort that laborers might demand, for the psychology of it if nothing else - they could eat, and hear, and have some other sensory feedback that wasn't necessarily directly related to the job...

Industrial Surrogate [Nuthin' But Mecha]

Rumored to be in the works before its official announcement yesterday at this weekend's Long Beach Comic-Con, Benjamin Shahrabani of publisher Com.X confirmed the news with a release stating that the comic

...has recently been tapped for development as a major motion picture by Mandeville Films, the production company behind the recent Touchstone Pictures release of the Jonathan Mostow directed, comic book based action thriller Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, and the upcoming Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg starrer, true life boxing drama The Fighter, from Paramount Pictures... Discussions regarding the adaptation [are] underway with a soon to be announced screenwriter.

Cla$$war was launched in 2002, the creation of writer Rob Williams, who described it as the result of reading Noam Chomsky, Bill Hicks and Alan Moore; the series tells of a secret American program to create superpowered soldiers and the products of that program, a superteam called Enola Gay and a rogue soldier known only as The American.

How does having a movie impact the books? Not just the promotion of the books, but you're also writing another Surrogates book...

I don't think much has changed. I understand that right now, it's in the news and it's something that's on everyone's mind because of the marketing campaign, but I am fully prepared for the fact that, next week, the world will have moved on. I'll just keep working away on the stories, and hopefully people will keep enjoying them, whether they be Hollywood people or readers at the bookstores.

I've got two other Surrogates books I want to do, but I'm not working on either of those at the moment. Surrogates isn't the only thing I want to do, so I'd like it to be one of those things I come back to around other projects that I'm working on. Right now, I have The Homeland Directive, which is more of a modern-day political meta-thriller, and that whole book was written before I started on the prequel to The Surrogates [Flesh and Bone, which came out earlier this year], but the film went into production so fast that we put the Surrogates prequel into production to come out before the movie, and that pushed Homeland Directive back another year. It'll come out next year.

I'm also adapting Percy Jackson and the Olympians young adult series into graphic novel format, and I have an Iron Man oneshot coming out in October, as well.

You're a busy man! Was Surrogates your first book?

Yeah, that's the first book I ever wrote.

So what was the impetus behind, not just Surrogates, but also just wanting to be a comic writer?

I'll tackle the comic writer first, then come back to The Surrogates. I always wanted to be a writer. When I was very, very little, I wanted to be an animator; to animate Bugs Bunny cartoons was like the highest form of achievement for me, and that's what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had all the animation books and I kept working at it, but I could tell that I had no talent for it, I mean, it was obvious. I think I turned to writing stories to explain what I couldn't draw with my hands. I was writing short stories at a very early age, like second, third and fourth grade. So I knew I wanted to be a writer, but it was always prose. I didn't grow up reading comics, comics weren't something on my radar. So when I was in grad school, getting my MFA in creative writing, through a friend of mine who worked in Borders, he got me to read Astro City, and I just really enjoyed it. It had all the complexity, the deep characterization, the subtext and the themes that the literary fiction I was enjoying had, but it also had this very strong visual element, and it just sort of struck me that here was an opportunity, that I could write a story and someone else could render it into art and it was probably as close as I would ever get to that original ambition of being an animator.

That was in 2000, that I decided to try and write comics. I wrote The Surrogates in 2002, I spent some time - I'm not sure I'd want to call "researching," but looking into it, trying to figure out what a comic book script looked like, and also boning up on some of the classics of the medium. I didn't start writing The Surrogates until May of 2002.

As far as writing The Surrogates, again when I was in grad school, we read a book called The Cyber Gypsies, which was a non-fiction book where a guy had spent a lot of time with people addicted to online games, and these people in the book had become so identified with the personas on their computers that they'd lose their jobs or get divorced or any number of things because they were devoting so much of their time to maintaining that persona that they were neglecting the basic steps of living. It was an idea that stuck with me, this basic human desire to be someone other than who we actually are. It just clicked for me in 2002: What if there was a technology that would allow you to create a persona that, instead of being bound in a machine or have a virtual reality situation, what if the technology was reversed and the machine would go out into the world and do all the things you need to do to live for you? You could be that persona all the time and still maintain all your responsibilities.

I was explaining the concept behind The Surrogates to a friend, and she both couldn't understand what was bad about the idea of having a Surrogate, and didn't see any conflict of who you "are" using that technology.

Well, I think there's a lot of good that could come from that technology, I think there's a lot of benefit. Like any technology, it can be abused, you know.

The Surrogates - more the first book than the second, perhaps - struck me not as an anti-technology book, but definitely something that warned of the dangers of becoming too enamored and relying too much on technology that divorces you so much from the majority of your life. Was that something you were trying to get across?

I definitely wanted that to be one of the themes. And like you said, I didn't want it to be anti-technology. I didn't want someone to read it and think, that's what this guy thinks, this is what he's saying, because in many cases, I don't have the answers. I'm just sort of asking the questions and it's up to the readers to answer them individually. In this case, I had these questions: What does technology do to our interpersonal relationships? What would it mean if we could all redefine not just our physical appearance, but also deeper notions like race and gender? In what ways would it be freeing, and in what ways would it be confining? All these sort of things, and I just wanted to put it out there. Writing for me, as an exercise, is a way for me not to find an answer as much as explore a question, whatever that question may be, that's behind the story I'm telling.

That's what I wanted to do, to pose those questions to the readers, but not at any point feel like I was answering them. I think that's when, as an audience, you start feeling like you're being preached to, and I don't enjoy that when I'm reading or watching a movie. I try to not do that when I write.

I think it's left very ambiguous, especially with the prequel, which explains a lot of the concepts behind the first book. Why did you go back and do Flesh and Bone?

That was always the intention. It was always meant as a trilogy of books, but back in the day, all the other books were very dependent on how successful the first book was. It was always intention to tell that middle story, then a prequel, then a sequel to continue the story from the first book. I'm writing them in the way I always intended to; I think it makes sense to go back before you go forward again, to see the origins of Harvey and Margaret Greer, of the Prophet and how he built his church and get that background before you go forward again.

With the Prophet and his church, were you playing on the traditional science versus faith theme, or was he and his church just the most obvious counterpoint to the blind faith the rest of society has in the technology in the first book?

A little bit of both, but definitely the science versus religion debate... It becomes this question of, Where does it end? If we're going to use science and technology for reasons purely based in vanity, because there's something inherently wrong in that, then where does that end? If you're going to say that there's something wrong with someone getting a facelift, if that is a misuse of technology, how is that different from plastic surgery because they were a burn victim? I understand a difference, I understand the practicality, but if you look at it from a purely religious - versus scientific - stance, and you try to draw a line between black and white, you see that it is the grey area I was talking about earlier. There aren't any easy answers to these questions, and it's up to people to answer them for themselves.

It's not only the religion versus science argument, but also the Prophet himself, the character; I wanted him to be a grey area himself. You see this more in the prequel, but you don't really know: Is he a con man, or is he doing this because of a deep and abiding faith in Christ? All of these things that he does can be construed in either way.

Something I really like about your writing in general, especially the second book, is how much you want to leave open to the reader's prejudices. You argue both sides about whether the technology is worthwhile or a bad thing.

I wanted to populate the book with people who are using the technology for different reasons. I think the movie focuses more on just the physical aspect, and the personal beautification element of the technology, but I wanted to fill the book with people who use it for different reasons. I mean, Greer's surrogate pretty much looks the way he looks, he looks a little bit different but only because he's aged since he bought the surrogate, but you get the impression that, on the day he walked out the showroom, he looked exactly like that. For him, it's not something about changing the way he looks, it's about something he needs to do his job and be safe. I wanted to have these people, have different reasons, so the reader could see different things, whether it's law enforcement or to improve public health, and say "Wow, these are benefits that this technology could give" so that it's not just something that people use for vanity or self-servedness.

Do you think that sort of subtlety can come through in the movie?

Am I worried it's going to be lost in the translation? I don't think it will be. To me, the most important part of the book, even though it's a very small element, is the relationship between Harvey Greer and [his wife] Margaret. I think maybe it accounts for ten pages, if that, of the entire graphic novel, but it's what drives home the human toll of the entire technology. It also lays bear the dichotomy of people using it for beautification and people using it for more utilitarian reasons, because Margaret is using it because she's uncomfortable with how she looks, but Harvey's just using it because it's something he needs to do [for his job]. All of that is retained in the film, and the relationship plays out very much like it does in the book, and I think because that is in there - and in the film, I think more screentime is devoted to it than pagetime in the book - I think that stuff will still shine through.

If you had a surrogate, what would you do with it?

I'd like to think that I'd be like Greer, I'd be a guy who'd use it for utilitarian reasons, not for any kind of vanity. But I understand how seductive technology is, and if I lived in a world like Greer does where everyone is using these things, it's be very easy to get sucked into that. I don't know if I'd perform as admirably as I'd want to.

Surrogates is in theaters now. The two graphic novels, The Surrogates and The Surrogates: Flesh and Bone are both available in bookstores and comic stores now.

Surrogates, opening today, is at its most potent when it reminds us just how much having a body totally sucks. Bodies break down, they get sick, and they fall apart. No wonder that everybody would rather jack into impervious, lovely robot bodies to face the world. Of course, it all goes horribly wrong, because somebody finds a way to destroy a robot "surrogate" and kill its operator at the same time. You won't be too shocked to hear that this turns out to be the result of a huge, confusing, nonsensical conspiracy in which nothing is what it seems.

There's been a lot of body horror involving technology lately — both Robert Downey Jr. and Jason Statham have had crude batteries inserted into their chest cavities, in Iron Man and Crank 2 respectively, and there was lots of cyborg self-loathing in Terminator Salvation. But Surrogates is the first movie I can remember seeing where the real self-loathing comes as a result of removing the body from technology.

When FBI agent Tom Greer, played by Bruce Willis, first ventures out into the world in his "meat bag" body, all of the robot-avatar people stare at him with pity, when they're not just ignoring him and elbowing him aside with their super strong robo-limbs. He's like the old man surrounded by perfect young people at the end of Logan's Run. The scenes of Willis staggering around the perfect robo-world, the stench of bodily decay coming off him, are extraordinarily powerful. They've managed to make him look way older and more decripit than he really is, while his ideal robot body (which we see a lot of early in the movie) is airbrushed into looking vapidly handsome.

And just to drive the point home, Willis takes more punishment than even an action-movie hero ought to be able to handle. He rarely manages to land a punch, but he's constantly being beaten, kicked, slammed, and caught up in nasty car accidents. Super-robots throw parking meters at his head and he barely ducks in time. He gets more and more bruised and slashed up, over the course of the film.

The movie aims to tell us that Willis' weakness and vulnerability is a result of too much reliance on technology — this is what happens when you lean on something too much, and then it's yanked away from you. But actually, you could just easily see Willis' decrepitude as proof that technology is awesome, and it's a mistake ever to yank yourself away from it.

The main thing standing in the way of that interpretation is how disturbingly candy-coated the robot bodies in the movie look. Sometimes, you start getting used to seeing the airbrushed loveliness of almost everyone in the film, and then you catch sight of a real person — or you just get a weird robot crowd scene — and you're unnerved once again. The movie has some really nice visual effects and concept design, especially in those scenes where we see the ugly, Terminator-esque endoskeletons under the immaculate skins.

And the movie definitely wants you to know that excessive reliance on technology is bad and wrong — it's one of the preachiest films I've seen in ages, and it's by no means subtle. Willis' character starts out being opposed to the use of robotic "surrogates," and his conviction rapidly hardens. Meanwhile, we are lectured constantly about the evil of using robot bodies to interact instead of communing in the flesh. And the people who are pro-Surrogate are always revealed to be evil, misguided or in need of an epiphany of some sort. Some of the preachiness comes from the Prophet (Ving Rhames), the leader of the anti-surrogate and generally Luddite resistance, but a lot of it comes from various mouthpiece characters, and bits of symbolism that are labeled "SYMBOLISM" in bright flashing colors.

The surrogates, of course, are a metaphor for our own reliance on technology to interact with the world. Our iPhones, our Blackberries, our laptops, our xBox lives. We're cutting ourselves off from real humanity by using these toys instead of going out and getting a sexually transmitted disease the way God intended.

The movie's preachiness is one huge problem — and it does get awfully tiresome after an hour or so of having messages shoved in your face — but the movie's other huge problem is that it is every bit as moronic as you'd expect from a film from the writers and director of Terminator 3. I went into this film trying to have no preconceptions, and hoping that T3 was just an aberration — but no, this film is the absolute definition of an idiotic action movie. Stuff happens for no particular reason, and there's a shocking twist every 10-15 minutes that comes out of nowhere, and then goes right back there. If you tried to diagram the plot, you'd wind up drawing an evil squiggle. One great source of plot twists is the fact that you never quite know who is really operating a robot surrogate.

Oh, and characters regularly say things like, "The only way to deal with addiction is to kill the addict!"

For some reason Surrogates reminded me of I, Robot. Maybe because both movies feature James Cromwell in a similar role. And they both have technology that everybody insists is safe inevitably biting us in the asses. But most of all, both movies have absolutely gorgeous concept design, amazing visuals, some really fun action sequences — and completely braindead storytelling. I would say Surrogates is slightly better than I, Robot, if only because it packs more of a punch to the gut.

Honestly, if you don't expect the plot to make sense, and if you enjoy giggling at ridiculous and often preachy dialog, you'll probably enjoy Surrogates a whole bunch. Bruce Willis keeps getting up, no matter what they throw at him. Even after his FBI boss says he's off the case, he keeps investigating the case. He's got some backstory involving a kid who died in an accident and a wife who's never really recovered, but mostly he's a stock-standard Willis character who won't quit until he gets to the truth. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The other thing that I really liked about Surrogates is the world-building. You get lots of interesting and sometimes horrifying hints about how this world works, including glimpsing an army "peace action" where robotic troops blow the shit out of meatsacks in some third-world country. And you sort of gather that poor people are stuck with shitty robot bodies, and you witness what looks like two surrogates beating up on a prostitute at one point. There's a nice undercurrent of corruption under the perfect shiny robot-sleeved world, which is way more effective than the movie's overt attempts to harangue us.

So to sum up: dumb movie, weak nonsense plot, incredibly preachy and sledgehammery. At the same time. it's a fun action movie with some nice set pieces, and the production design and world-building are really lovely. And it's mostly worth it for Bruce Willis' craggy, saggy, excessively mortal countenance, as he stumbles in some state of grievous injury through a landscape full of way too pretty people.

These are the science-fiction universes where you can transfer your consciousness into a robot body permanently, and wave goodbye to those annoying bones and excretory organs forever. And tomorrow, we'll have a list of the ten best robot bodies you can plug your brain into, and control temporarily.

Note: To some extent, there's some overlap here with the list we did a while ago of people who died and went to cyber-heaven. So we left out a few examples from the earlier list, like Dr. Ira Graves and Juliana Soong in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Mindscan, by Robert J. Sawyer
Wealthy Jake Sullivan is dying of a rare medical condition, so he pays the Immortex corporation to scan his brain and load him into a new, immortal robot body. There, he meets a children's author, Karen, who's also gotten a robot body so she can keep her copyrights for centuries. They fall in love — but Jake's original meat body, who's still not dead yet, decides to sue to get his personhood back from the robot duplicate. And after Kate's meat body dies, her son sues to get control over her estate.

Robotrix

In this bizarre, messed-up Hong Kong movie, an evil super-rich business man loads his brain into a robot body. And a sexy crime-fighting babe gets killed trying to stop him — so two female scientists, in shiny fetishy labcoats, put her naked body on a table with an also-naked robot body, and then transfer her consciousness into the robot. So she can go out there and kick some robo-butt. (We have a couple more clips from Robotrix here.)

8th Man aka 8-Man:

In this early Japanese anime series, Special Agent Brady gets killed, but downloads his brain into a robot body and becomes the 8th Man, a robot superhero who has superior speed, strength and reflexes, and he can change his appearance at will. His alter ego is Tobor, a private detective. Watch him deal with a Godzilla-esque robot from outer space, in this awesome clip.

Stargate: SG-1, "Tin Man"
The SG-1 crew winds up on a planet where a man named Harlen copies their consciousnesses into robot bodies. In an interesting twist on the usual "minds transferred into robot bodies" concept, it turns out that the crew's original bodies are intact, and they're eventually free to go. The robot duplicates meet their original selves, and the robots are a bit jealous of the "real" crew, who get to go home. Witness this exchange between robot Jack O'Neil and the "real" Jack:

ROBOT JACK: Somebody stole my life. That's what happened.

O'NEILL: You talking about my life?

ROBOT JACK: Hey, I've got every right to it that you do. I was kind of hoping I could figure out away to undo all this, get myself back into my body, where I belong.

O'NEILL: Well it's occupied, thank you.

The "Ware" series by Rudy Rucker
Cobb Anderson is an aging computer scientist who's best known for committing treason — he gave the robots free will and liberated them from the restrictive laws of robotics. Now the robots, who are living on the Moon, have come up with a scheme for Cobb to live forever — they've created a perfect robot duplicate of his body, and they want to digitize his consciousness and load it into the new shell. The only catch: to scan Cobb's brain and duplicate it, they have to slice it up, thus destroying it in the process.

Sliders, "State Of The Art"

The dimensional travelvers visit a world where robots have taken over — and the robots' creator, James Aldohn, has found a process to transfer a human consciousness into a robot body. The only downside: it's an untested procedure, and he needs to use the visitors as guinea pigs. Weirdly, the scene where Katherine McClellan's robot body gets switched on has inspired some really odd slow-mo Youtube fetish vids.

The Outer Limits, "The Brain Of Colonel Barham"

Colonel Barham, a dying astronaut, volunteers to have his brain loaded into a robot body so he can go to Mars before the Soviets — although, in this case, it looks like they keep part of the meat brain alive, so it's an edge case. In any case, the arrogant Col. Barham goes nuts once he's in a robot body, and he starts trying to kill anyone who messes with him. Somehow, his robot body has the ability to control people's minds and turn them into zombies.

Caprica

We couldn't leave this Battlestar Galactica prequel out — that plucky Zoe Graystone gets killed in a terrorist bombing, but luckily she's figured out a way to back up her brain electronically first, because the human mind only takes up about 300 MB of disk space.

Skinned by Robin Wasserman

Lia Kahn is rich, young and beautiful — unfortunately she's also fatally injured in a car accident. So her dad pays for her consciousness to be transferred into a new robot body. She no longer eats or has any sense of smell, and she doesn't feel touch the same way she used to. Is she still the same person she used to be? Even she isn't sure, and her old "popular kids" clique at high school isn't sure whether to accept her either. Think you had a hard time fitting in in high school? Imagine doing it with a robot body, in a culture that's uncomfortable with uploaded humans. (Read an interview with the author here.) Another novel with a similar theme is Nightmare In Silicon by Colette Phair.

Star Trek: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"

Captain Kirk's mind gets copied perfectly into an android body, except that he's obsessed with being sick of Spock's half-breed interference, because that's what Kirk was muttering to himself when his mind got scanned. I love the spinning table with the two naked Shatners on it (at around 5:20 in this video.) Of course, they don't destroy Kirk's original fleshy body, probably just because they don't get around to it.

Runners up:

The Red Skull And Zola both transfer their brains into robot bodies in Captain America Reborn

The Creation Of The Humanoids

Osama Tezuka (creator of Astro Boy) writes a story of a dying person whose consciousness gets transferred into a robot body in the Phoenix series.

Fragile Machine

Starr Saxon, aka Machinesmith, becomes a gay robotic supervillain in issues of Daredevil and the Fantastic Four. (See top image.)

Ghost In The Shell: Innocence shows a world where cyborgs have abandoned their last bits of humanity and have become fully robotic.

Battle Angel Alita also includes some of the best cybernetic bodies — thanks to Cash907Censored for suggesting it.

In Dragonball Z movie 2, Dr. Willow dies, but he downloads his brain into a robot body.

The story "The Robot Who Came To Dinner" by Ron Goulart features a detective who's downloaded his brain into a robot body.

Jens in Galidor: Defenders Of The Outer Dimension

Doozy Bots

In Surrogates, people stay at home all the time, and jack their brains into glamorous, super-strong robot bodies, so you don't have to risk getting hurt or let people see your bad skin. Mostow explains to us how it all works.

So explain to me how this stem chair works, how does it save people from bed sores if they sit in it all day?

If you literally were in a chair all day long, you would have to worry about things like bed sores. But in the movie, they have these fantastic chairs that are constantly stimulating your body parts so you never have to suffer from those problems.

But how do they eat and go to the bathroom?

Well you have to get up occasionally, things like that technology can't do for you. There are a couple moments in the movie where the surrogate is completely immobilized and you find out that their operator was in the bathroom or getting a snack or something. Basically your Surrogate freezes in the action of whatever it's doing, and you can go into action and go and do whatever it is you need to do — then go back online. It's no different [than] if you were in a chat room, and you got up and and had a salad in the refrigerator and then come back. Everybody who was talking to you would just see a blinking cursor for a moment.

I've seen in the trailers that you can customize your Surrogates and I believe I saw one Surrogate with eyes on the side of its head. What else can you do?

Actually that's one of the few scenes that's not in the movie anymore. We have a scene in a bar where the bartender had put eyes in the side of his head so he can be helping out one customer, yet seeing what the patrons at the other end of the bar wanted. That's actually no longer in the movie, but there are other customized Surrogates in the movie. Most people chose to have an idealized version of themselves, but some people chose to completely change their identity. Some people chose to change their gender.

You see a girl who has literally put spikes coming out of her skull — metal spikes. She's gone a bit punk with their Surrogate. And there are Surrogates who have completely changed their skin color. We don't spend a whole lot of time on that because it's not germane to the central plot of the movie. But it was an idea that we wanted to pay some lip service to.

My personal favorite things about movies in the "not so distant future" are the little things that the crew and writers come up with, the things that set it apart as the future.

We have a lot of blink-and-you-may-miss-it details like that. I made the decision, early in preproduction, to do what the graphic novel did: even though it's set in the future, he made the world look like it does today, just with Surrogates in it. I didn't want this to be a movie where the question was, "hey do you think cars are really going to look like that in the future, will they be flying around?" These are the question marks that can distract you, when you watch a movie that is set in the future. So I said, let's just make this movie in the near future, and this technology will have come a long way very quickly. So it looks like the world we live in but it's just populated with all these robots.

What was that thing in the trailer that the Surrogates were stabbing themselves with, it looked like a drug or electricity or something like that?

There's a scene in the movie with something called "the jacker," and it's at a party. There's this glass tube that's sending this blue energy. There's a party scene where Bruce's wife is home with some friends and she's a Surrogate and they are all Surrogates too. And they are engaged in this sort of communal thing... that is, sort of... it's unclear if it's a drug-like thing, is it sort of a sexual thing, is it a combination of the two? And it basically is giving these people back in their stem chairs at home a rush by applying this energy field to their Surrogates.

Well how well policed is this Surrogates program? It seems to be owned by a private company, and yet the police use them as well?

Think of it like Microsoft, where Microsoft is a private company but everyone from law enforcement to criminals use their software. This company is the leading manufacturer of Surrogate robots and it spread like wildfire...There's no formal relationship between the government and the Surrogates.

What did Bruce Willis think about the idealized version of himself?

Bruce was an active participant in all that. We explored a lot of different looks and settled on this look as the best choice. The best thing about Bruce is he's in such good shape and a good looking guy we were able to make him look younger with a variety of old fashioned techniques and some CGI. And for his real self, we were able to make him look like he had more milage on him, with a series of old fashioned film techniques, and with his own performance. As opposed to getting a guy who's 25-years-old and [trying to] make him look 50, Bruce was the perfect guy for this film.

Was it his decision to make his ideal robot self blond? That's some beautiful robot hair there.

We wanted something where you look at it and say I've never seen Bruce Willis look like that before. We wanted something to catch your attention. And that's the whole point, people don't look like themselves. And in Bruce's character's mind he'd like to look as if he was 20 years younger.

Iron Man 2:

Entertainment Tonight debuts some new footage from their Iron Man 2 set visit on Thursday, and they put out this brief teaser video, in which you can just glimpse the racetrack scene we've heard so much about — including a few split-second glimpses of Whiplash, and some flames.

Toy Story 3

We won't see the full Toy Story 3 trailer until the release of the Toy Story double feature, but GeekTyrant has snagged a description of what we can expect from the third film:

[The new trailer shows] Woody and the gang at Sunnyside Daycare. Where life among the toddlers looks like something out of "Lord of the Flies." … Buzz and Co. get absolutely brutalized by these 3-year-olds. Which is why they decide that "We're busting out of here." The only problem is – during their initial escape attempt – the Space Ranger gets severely damaged. To the point that Woody & friends are forced to hit Lightyear's reset button. Which then puts Buzz into Spanish-speaking mode. … When Buzz is in Spanish-speaking mode – he then becomes this hot-blooded, flamenco-dancing romantic figure prone to grand gestures. Which Jessie winds up being quite taken with.

[GeekTyrant]

Zombieland

Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick say we'll be dropped into the middle of the zombie apocalypse, without seeing how it all began. [ShockTillYouDrop]

Supernatural

Here are some promo images for the season's fourth episode, "The End," in which Dean finds himself five years in the future during a zombie apocalypse:

[SF Universe]

The ninth episode, "The Real Ghostbusters," will featur Demian, a short, chubby copier repairman who's nerdy on the outside, but sensitive and heroic on the inside. We'll also meet Demian's friend Barnes, a gawky stereo salesman who also has heroic aspirations and a surprisingly courageous side. [Spoiler TV]

Doctor Who

Presumably, neither the robe nor the gigantic North Face jacket are part of the new wardrobe:

[Digital Spy]

Dollhouse

Here is the description for the third episode, "Belle Chose:"

Echo and Victor's imprints collide when Echo is sent on an assignment as a fun-loving, seductive college student and Victor is imprinted as the psychotic nephew of a Dollhouse shareholder (guest star Michael Hogan).

[Spoiler TV]

And below are images from the episode, complete with croquet mallet-wielding Echo:

[Spoiler TV]

Episode seven, "Meet Jane Doe," will include a sheriff by the name of Rand, a Texas good ol' boy. [Spoiler TV]

Lost

Another filming location was spotted, this time at St. Francis West in Hawaii. [LOST Spoilers]

The title of the fourth episode will be "The Substitute." Rumor has it the episode will focus on Locke. There is some speculation that we will be seeing a false Locke who will be revealed to be a shapeshifter. [Ausiello]

Pandorum

In an interview with MTV, Cam Gigandet offers more details about the space madness thriller:

It's basically a deep-space syndrome that people get, a type of psychosis. There's all sorts of symptoms, whether it's paranoia, you're seeing things, hallucinating, dreaming up all sorts of weird scenarios. It's something that, when you have it, you aren't aware that you have it... Yeah, and they all have no memories. This crew, this capsule or sleeping pod that they're in ... when you're in there for long enough and it preserves your life, you end up losing your memory. While they're trying to figure out all this stuff, they don't know what happened in the past, where they've been, what they've done. Any of that stuff. So you're always suspicious of everyone ... that's one of the cool things about this movie. They're always suspicious, and slowly their memory starts coming back. It's like this puzzle that they put together.

He also mentions the movie's monsters and says that the reason for the monsters' existence is more interesting than the actual monsters. [MTV Movie News]

Stargate Universe

Meet Eli in Sky1's promo:

Fringe

We'll get another dose of Leonard Nimoy and more on Olivia's past in the fourth episode, "Momentum Deferred:"

Recuperating from the traumatic and alarming meeting with Massive Dynamic founder William Bell (guest star Nimoy), Agent Dunham consumes a powerful "fringe" concoction that Dr. Bishop prescribes to stimulate her memory. Meanwhile, the Fringe Division investigates a series of robbery cases that are tied to shape-shifting. As clues are tracked and memories are jogged, another woman experimented on by Dr. Bishop is introduced and a flashback reveals more about Olivia's visit to the alternate reality.

[Fringe Spoilers]

Plus, stills from the episode with Nimoy and Charlie-who-isn't-Charlie:

[Spoiler TV]

Heroes

NBC delivers a new promo for next week's episode "Ink:"

Chuck

The fifth episode of the season will be called "Chuck vs. First Class." [ChuckTV]

New Moon

Taylor Lautner has his shirt off yet again, while Robert Pattinson is fully clothed with shining eyes:

[MTV Movies Blog]

Priest

Cam Gigandet also talks a bit about Priest, in which he plays a part-vampire sheriff:

It's like a Western set in this alternate reality where you have these creatures, these vampire-like people. It's like The Searchers. It's a journey movie. You can look at it from a horror point of view, but we've always thought of it as a story of these people on a journey, coming into their own. That's what my character does. He starts off as someone who's scarified so much and been thrown into this world that he didn't choose. And he grows into a man who can take care of himself and is confident in his choices.

[IGN]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

There are only two people I want around me when the world ends, and that's Bruce Willis and Will Smith. In the latest clip/interview from Disney's Surrogates Bruce Willis demonstrates exactly why. Surrogates will be out this Friday.

iVerse and Top Shelf have teamed up to offer the entire first series of The Surrogates on iTunes. The first issue is available as a free app, with a second app offering the first and second issues (and the chance to purchase the remaining three) for just 99 cents. If you're looking for something to do with your iPhone besides playing Toy Story Mania, there are much worse ways to spend your weekend. Plus, you won't be distracted by Bruce Willis' wig.

The Surrogates #1 [iTunes]

Tron Legacy

Producer Sean Bailey says that the younger version of Jeff Bridges (depicted using the same techniques done to de-age Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, play a major role in the film. But Bridges will also play a second, older character, though Bailey won't say who. He also said that the computer world of Tron Legacy is not part of the Internet, but an isolated space that evolved on its own, much like the Galapagos Islands. He also reiterated that we'll be seeing light runner vehicles traveling off-road. [SCI FI Wire]

Surrogates

Radha Mitchell talks a bit about playing her character as both her human self and her robotic surrogate:

It's great to be able to change your costume in one story, and have these two different identities, but what I guess the story really gets at is the abstraction of social interaction and I guess also the obsession with perfection. So there are the robots that are all supposed to have this particular aesthetic look that I guess currently we would consider better than the other look, but if you can change your costume like that, you lose the bias, and then you go for comfort. I had a padded ass in the second costume, and, like, buckteeth, but ultimately when you can wear high heels, or you can sit around in a padded ass? So you can do either or by choice and you choose the ass. Then there's the idea that you could change your gender, and you could change your race, so what is intrinsic to who we are? We feel like it's this sort of physical thing, but maybe we are just these creatures of the mind.

[Moviehole]

Pandorum

Here is the German trailer for the scifi thriller:

[via ShockTillYouDrop]

The Green Hornet

Seth Rogen gets suited up (in an actual suit) for his superhero movie, plus Jay Chou in suspenders:

[Accidental Sexiness]

Dollhouse

At the end of the season premiere, Echo will reveal to Paul that she is functioning with multiple personalities in her head and is becoming aware of her situation. And then Paul will start to look upon Echo as something other than a damsel in distress. [EW]

Kick-Ass

Mark Millar says both the Kick-Ass book and the movie will end on a teaser, setting up a sequel. [MTV]

Fringe

Blair Brown, who plays Massive Dynamics COO Nina Sharp, talks a bit about her character and the coming season:

[Zap2it]

Episode nine will feature Dr. Lao Che, an English and Cantonese-speaking herbalist with big plans. [Spoiler TV]

We'll have a fresh encounter with one of Broyles' old cases from his long history with the Fringe Division this season. [EW]

Joshua Jackson said not to expect any Peter-Olivia romance, as he views their relationship more like that of siblings. He also says this season's episodes are about half mythology episodes, and half one-off investigations. [CinemaBlend]

Supernatural

As we mentioned, the season's fourth episode, "The End," features Dean traveling into the future to the year 2014, when a demonic virus is turning people into zombies, and Zachariah explains that this is the world that results from Dean's refusal to help the angels fight Lucifer. Dean also meets his future self.

It's a Dean-heavy episode, to be sure, but Sam will appear about ten minutes before then end, and his appearance will make his absence from the rest of the episode make sense. [E! Online]

For the seventh episode, Hal Ozsan and Pascale Hutton have been cast as Lia and Patrick respectively. [Spoiler TV]

House

Creator David Shore is aware that Taub and Thirteen's three-year fellowships are about to end, but hasn't figured out what to do about it. Also, there are no indications in the early scripts that Cuddy is aware of House getting down and dirty with Franka Potente, but Cuddy may be getting a little action of her own, in the form of scruffy privae detective Lucas Douglas. [EW]

Lost

The third episode of the new season will center on Kate. [EW]

Warehouse 13

Here is the official description and sneak peek for the show's first season finale from Syfy:

"MacPherson" is the thrilling action-packed season finale which features guest appearances by CCH Pounder (ER) and Roger Rees (Cheers). MacPherson, after a failed attempt to take Artie's life, is now selling dangerous artifacts, stolen from the Warehouse shelves, on the black-market. Artie and Leena (Genelle Williams) also suspect there's a mole in the Warehouse who's secretly aligned with MacPherson – could it be Claudia? Meanwhile, as the team hunts down MacPherson, they realize too late that his capture is a carefully orchestrated trap to destroy them.

V

The producers are casting the guest role of Cyrus for episode three. He'll be a jittery man in his late 30s who was, in his youth, a fierce and proud soldier. [Spoiler TV]

Heroes

Actors Ray Park and Robert Knepper say that their characters aren't stereotypical carnival folk, and Knepper described his character Samuel is a "Keith Richards-esque, rock and roller kind of guy." Park said his character, Edgar is a supe speedster like Daphne, with knife skills and acrobatics as a bonus. Samuel, meanwhile, is an earthmover, able to manipulate the ground beneath him. They also said there is a lot of rivalry and jealousy between the pair, saying if they trust each other, they still won't turn their backs on one another for very long. [CBR]

On September 28, NBC is launching ten consecutive weeks of Heroes webisodes, which they say will crossover with the TV series. [Spoiler TV]

The tenth episode of the season is called "Brother's Keeper." [HeroesSite]

Eureka

In the season finale, Zoe heads off to Harvard, Tess is off to Australia, and a magnetic disturbance hovers over the town:

The Box

Cameron Diaz goes groovy in the latest round of publicity stills:

[Spoiler TV]

Priest

Madhcen Amick has been cast in this Paul Bettany-starring vampire Western. She'll be playing the mother of Bettany's kidnapped niece. [ShockTillYouDrop]

Smallville

In the early part of the season, Tess will mostly be interacting with Zod. They'll be allies, but with very different agendas — hers to protect the Blur, his to find him. And episode three will feature a zombified Lois Lane. [EW]

FlashForward

Seven clips from the premiere have been released:

[UGO]

In the third episode, a young Somali herder will see some very surprising things. [Spoiler TV]

MovieWeb has tons of interviews with the producers and cast:

Marc Guggenheim:

Jessika Borsiczky:

David Goyer:

Joseph Fiennes:

Christine Woods:

Courtney B. Vance:

Sonya Walger:

[MovieWeb]

Vampire Diaries

Ian Somerhalder, who plays less human-loving vamp Damon, says that while we'll see flashes of Damon's humanity, he'll stick with the evil thing for a while. He also says that Damon harbors a lot of animosity toward his brother Stefan for something that happened in their past, and any time Stefan finds himself enjoying any happiness, Damon will show up to ruin it. To that end, Damon will try to ingratiate himself to the townsfolk and worming his way into Stefan's life. [E! Online]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown and Charlie Jane Anders.

Zombieland

A new series of stills give us a closer look at our survivalist heroes and adds a new dimension to your killer clown nightmares:

[ShockTillYouDrop]

Where the Wild Things Are

Here are a few more monstrous images from Spike Jonze's adaptation:

[/Film]

Surrogates

In an interview with SciFi Scanner, director Jonathan Mostow talks a bit about what he's trying to say about technology in Surrogates and how it's different from his work on Terminator:

Whenever there's a new gadget I'm typically the guy that will go out and buy it. Terminator is a movie that said, "Be afraid of technology because it can take over our lives." This is a movie that says, "Technology is great, it makes our lives better, but at what price?" I think a thousand years from now, historians will look back on this time as a time just as seminal as when mankind first discovered fire or invented the printing press.

[AMC]

Pandorum

The latest round of stills show off the ship and plenty of space grime:

[IGN]

Dollhouse

We mentioned earlier that Mellie/November would be making a return, and in images from the third episode "Instinct," we see her not only back inside the Dollhouse, but face-to-face with Paul:

[Spoiler TV]

Ray Wise, whom you may remember as the smooth-talking Devil on Reaper has been cast as Howard, the previously-mentioned higher-up in the Dollhouse. [EW]

And, for good measure, here's a trio of promo images featuring Echo with a gun:

[Spoiler TV]

Lost

Another detail has emerged from the LAX set. An extra claims that it looks like Charlie has an overdose in the bathroom during what appears to be a pre-crash Flight 815. [Spoiler TV]

Katey Sagal is returning as Helen Norwood, Locke's one time girlfriend who supposedly died in 2006 of a brain aneurysm. Executive producer Carlton Cuse said he would like to find a way to bring back Julie Bowen as well, who played Jack's ex-wife Sarah. [TV Guide]

Reports from Hawaii indicate that the crew has been filming at the Dharma submarine dock, and many of the island's old sets are being set up again, including the Jughead tower, so we will be seeing a lot more old familiar places in addition to LAX. [The ODI]

From another set, one fan saw Michael Emerson, who plays Ben Linus, wearing a long gray trenchcoat and black pants, watching someone in the distance who is exiting a medical building. Eventually, it's clear the person leaving the building is non other than John Locke in his wheelchair. Locke appears very sad, keeping his head down as he wheels toward the street. Locke appears to be waiting for a ride, and sorrowfully watches a little boy playing with a red ball. The boy's ball rolls into the street and the boy runs after it, forcing an oncoming car to screech to a halt. Locke throws himself out of his chair and crawls toward the boy as if to save him, but the boy is fine and simply picks up his ball again and heads to the sidewalk. Ben watches the scene, then runs over to an angry Locke to help him back into his chair. [Lyly Ford]

Ian Somerhalder headed to Hawaii yesterday to film Boone's return. The only thing he could say is that he'll appear in several of the season's episodes. [EW]

True Blood

Chances are we'll see the Newlins in the third season (and they'll be pissed). Also Alan Ball softened Eric's image a bit in Season Two to make him seem viable as a love interest for Sookie. [Televisionary]

Stargate Universe

The producers are looking to cast an actress for the role of Kiva for a three-episode arc. Kiva will be the strong-willed commander of the Lucian Alliance, and will do whatever it takes to ensure her people's safety, even at the expense of the Destiny crew. [Spoiler TV]

Heroes

NBC has released the official synopsis for the season premiere:

Claire (Hayden Panettiere) struggles with adjusting to her new life in college when a mysterious death thrusts her into the spotlight once again. Elsewhere, Hiro (Masi Oka) and Ando (James Kyson Lee) continue their noble quest to help people by promoting their abilities. Angela (Cristine Rose) fears Nathan (Adrian Pasdar) will soon discover his true identity; while Matt (Greg Grunberg) is haunted by an unexpected visitor seeking something he has lost. Tracy Strauss (Ali Larter) and H.R.G. (Jack Coleman) join forces, looking for the key to unlock the motive behind a horrific crime. Meanwhile, Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) uses his abilities for good, but he is soon called upon to aid an old friend. While the heroes adjust to their new surroundings, a mysterious carnival clan, led by ringleader Samuel (Robert Knepper), sets their sights on familiar faces.

And Comic Book Resources has six video previews from the two-hour premiere:

[Comic Book Resources]

In the third episode, "Acceptance," Hiro will focus his attention on saving others' lives, while Angela helps Nathan try to remember his past and Tracy tries to get her job back. [Spoiler TV]

Fringe

Expect Leonard Nimoy's William Bell back on October 8th, but not in the flesh. Olivia will undergo an eerie procedure to flashback to her encounter with Bell in the alternate reality and try to understand the experiments Walter and Bell performed on her as a child. Also, we'll meet another one of Walter's guinea pigs, a young woman played by Theresa Russell. We'll also encounter actor Thomas Kretschmann, who plays a "cold-blooded antagonist" with a secret, which, once revealed, we won't soon forget. [TV Guide Magazine]

In the third episode "Fracture," the team surveys a messy crime scene and Olivia visits a bowling alley:

[Fringe Spoilers]

Eclipse

Taylor Lautner claims that Eclipse, which is being helmed by 30 Days of Night director David Slade, will be darker than the first two Twilight films, and will appeal more to male audiences. [MTV Movies Blog]

Smallville

In an interview with IESB, Callum Blue talks a little bit about his role as Zod. He mostly rehashes what he's said in previous interviews, but says that in the episodes he's filmed so far, he's cut off a person's head, but has yet to fly. [IESB]

Paranormal Activity

The Paranormal Activity poster promises the film will be the scariest viewing experience of your life:

[IGN]

FlashForward

The producers are looking to cast a bevy of actors for the ninth episode, mostly Japanese actors who can speak fluent Japanese. They're also looking to cast the recurring role of Gordon, a spineless but well-spoken supervisor, and the possibly recurring role of Frank, a former soldier from Ghana with a shady military past who now works at an LA branch of Home Depot. [Spoiler TV]

And two more TV promos for the series:

Eastwick

In the seventh episode, we'll meet Greta Noa, a Soho art dealer and close personal friend of the mephistophelean Darryl Van Horne. Darryl has asked Greta to come Eastwick to view Roxie's artwork, and Greta may have the power to change her life. [Spoiler TV]

The Vampire Diaries

Two clips have surfaced from tomorrow night's episode "The Night of the Comet:"

These trailers and clips feel like the first time we're actually getting a taste of the Surrogates, and it's got that B-Movie flavor we've been missing. Let's hope it doesn't go flat. Surrogates comes out September 25th.

Inception:

Someone who claims to have read the whole screenplay for Christopher Nolan's "architecture of the mind" thriller posted a review online — and several salt mines worth of grains of salt are probably indicated. The synopsis is vastly different from the other dribs and drabs we've learned so far, and sounds a bit outlandish to boot. At the same time, you just never know — and I remember dismissing a spot-on accurate summary of The Dark Knight as a fake months before the movie came out.

In any case, the lucky (or lying) reviewer says that far from being about stepping into people's dreams for espionage purposes, as we've reported previously, Inception is actually about using the mind to travel to any point in space. A man named Jacob Hastley has recently become paraplegic, and he considers killing himself — but instead he discovers a connection between the human mind and space. Since both space and the mind's capacity are infinite (they are?), you can create a doorway from your mind into any point in space.

So Jacob discovers a "thought algorithm" that lets him travel to any point in the universe, without actually traveling. He visits other solar systems, and even other galaxies, and it's groovy. Then he discovers that other people already know how to do this mind-traveling thing, and they're 150 percent smarter than average humans because they use more of their brain capacity. These other travelers are aware of Jacob's travels, and Jacob has to find the truth behind the origins of the universe (hence "Inception") before the other travelers catch up to him.

The supporting cast includes Lisa, a genius and Jacob's ex-wife who dumped him after he was injured, but who shows up again right after his first trip. Plus Kansas, a dog whisperer who connects in an unearthly way with her animals, Tark, a 37-year-old man who seems to have a wisdom beyond his years, and Isabell, a blind woman who will stop at nothing to see again. So... what do you think? Do we call in TrekMovie's Senator Vreenak?

Update: Apparently it was an April Fool's prank. Oh well. [Script Shadow, thanks Ryan!]

Batman 3:

Have we already mentioned a dozen times before that Aaron Eckhart says Harvey Dent died at the end of The Dark Knight? Here's one more for luck. [MTV]

Surrogates:

Just how badly do you want to see some kick-ass robot-fighting new footage from Surrogates? Badly enough to sit through a music video by the band Breaking Benjamin? If so, then here ya go. The song is pretty dreadful, but the scenes from the movie make it look pretty darn amazing. [Thanks Mike!]

Jennifer's Body:

Director Karen Kusama explains what appealed to her about this movie's script:

I really, really loved the fact that it had this subverted fairytale kind of structure where in the end it's Needy who has to save Chip, save herself and deal with Jennifer. That she really has to become an adult over the course of the movie and that was powerful to me. I know the movie plays like a crazy, fun genre film, but I hope that there's something a little bit emotionally richer.

A tragedy befalls the town, and the townsfolk find a song to unify them in their grief. And there's a great moment where we see Jennifer cupping blood out of a torn-open torso. [ShockTillYouDrop]

Supernatural:

Tired of Sam and Dean ripping each other to pieces? Then there's good news. Eric Kripke says season five is about "building Sam and Dean back up in a way that makes them older, sadder, wiser, and, ultimately, stronger. It's funny, we've been feeling in many ways that this is the most optimistic season of Supernatural we've ever done. Because even though the exterior circumstances are a massive cluster f–k, internally, the boys aren't tearing each other apart every episode. It's more like, ‘Hey, maybe we'll lose, but, dammit, let's go down swinging.'" [EW]

Fringe:

The question with Charlie isn't so much whether he's going, but when. (And I think this means in which episode he'll leave, and it's not some kind of hint that Charlie will be time-traveling.) [EW]

Another combined Bones/Fringe promo:

FlashForward:

A new clip from the pilot, in which people start to realize those blackouts weren't just blackouts. Plus a few promos I don't think we've shown you before.

House:

House has "steamy goings-on" with she-who-shall-not-be-named in the season premiere, but Huddy is far from over — House and Cuddy have an intense attraction, but it's as much intellectual and spiritual as sexual. Also, when House, Wilson and Cuddy go on a business trip in episode seven, Lucas tags along. [EW]

Warehouse 13:

A sneak peek from next Tuesday's episode, where Myka has to save her dad (Michael Hogan!) from a sinister artifact.

Heroes:

Ready to pick at that scab again? Here are a bevy of photos from the two-part season premiere, "Orientation" and "Jump, Push, Fall." (I guess "orientation" refers to Claire going to college as well as, possibly, her much-discussed lesbian-until-graduation-ness. Must resist the temptation to make a joke about matriculation.) [Herosite]

Smallville:

Tom Welling explains that going into season nine, Clark has lost faith in his old view of the human race:

Well, in the past Clark has always been the reluctant hero. Everyone is telling him what he has to do and he doesn't want to do it. With the events of Jimmy's death [in May's season finale], along with the eight seasons building up, he realizes that his view on humanity has been wrong. And he goes to Jor-El and says, ‘I messed up, what do I do now?' Jor-El takes him in, and Clark starts his training. His training ultimately is what will prepare him to be who we all know he's going to be in the future. So it's him spending time at the Fortress of Solitude downloading all this information. At the same time, information is given to him that the fate of the world depends on Lois Lane's survival. So Clark has to struggle between his destiny and his humanity. Especially in the first few episodes it gets in the way of the training, because he just can't help but deal with humans and help people, when all Jor-El wants him to do is shut everyone off, forget about them, rise above them and be the hero he needs to be.

And Clark wears the "S" symbol on his chest, the sign of the House of El, as a means of establishing a "call sign" for himself. He's no longer the red-blue blur, just the Blur. In episode two, through a contrivedcomplicated set of circumstances caused by "interesting lighting", Lois gets a good look at the symbol on Clark's chest, but doesn't see his face. Clark has an opportunity to step forward and show her his face, but chooses not to. And here's a new pic. [TV Guide Magazine via OSCK]

Chuck:

Angie Harmon wants Captain Awesome dead because he's a superspy now. Or something. [EW]

Eastwick:

I don't think we've featured this sneak peek and promo from the "Desperate Housewitches" show:

And it's not much of a spoiler to say this show is "cheesy and dull" according to E! Online. The devil is a douche instead of debonair. Sara Rue is wasted in the background, at least in the pilot. [E! Online]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

September 4th
Gamer
...this one, which Annalee loved. Even if you've not seen the movie, you'll have seen the trailers enough to be familiar with the idea behind it: In the not-too-distant future, mad scientist Michael C. Hall has invented a way to remote control people, which allows gamers to live out their fantasies in reality... which makes us wonder if Bruce Willis' Surrogates should be a little worried about this coming out first. Gerard Butler makes with the explodo, and if you liked the Crank movies - made by the same people - consider this right up your inevitably aflame, full of over the top action, alley.

September 9th
9
For those who won't be spending Wednesday in a Beatles Rock Band-induced musical coma, consider Shane Acker's CG-animated post-apocalyptic movie (with voices from Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly and Jennifer Connelly, amongst others) that tries to make "stitchpunk" into a real genre. Existential angst meets the Island of Misfit Toys, as creatures made up of the remnants of a destroyed society try to discover the truth behind their origins. As you might expect, Tim Burton is executive producer on this one.

September 18th
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
AKA the film that Meredith is trying to convince me I must see as soon as possible. Adapted from the 1982 classic children's book by the writers of television's How I Met Your Mother, the CG-animated Cloudy lets the voices of Bill Hader, Neil Patrick Harris (of course), Andy Samberg and more explore why science can be trouble when it means that foodstuffs replace raindrops.

Jennifer's Body
You know all about this one by now: Juno's Diablo Cody writes a horror movie in which everyone's worst fears about Megan Fox come true - as long as your worst fears involve her turning into a literally-maneating she-demon dispatching various unfortunate boys in high school. Director Karyn Kusama directed the bigscreen version of Aeon Flux, so maybe this is a chance for her to earn back some movie karma.

Pandorum
Spacemen Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster wake up without their memories and adrift in space in director Christian Alvart (who also co-wrote the movie with Travis Milloy)'s mysterious space horror. What has happened to the crew, and what does it have to do with the future of the human race? And, more importantly, how excited should we be about Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson being attached as producer for the movie?

September 21st
The Age Of Stupid
A "crowd-funded" movie about the dangers of climate change? This drama-documentary-animation hybrid offers up Pete Postlethwaite as a man in the year 2055, looking back at "archival footage" (ie, documentary material) from our time and wondering why more wasn't done to stop the environmental damage that humanity was causing. Animators on the project include Gorillaz' Passion Pictures, and music comes from Radiohead, amongst others.

September 25th
The Invention of Lying
Ricky Gervais continues his attempt to break into movies (And the less said about Ghost Town, the better) with this movie set on an alternate Earth where Gervais' character invents the entire concept of lying in order to win the heart - or, at least, the body - of Jennifer Garner's character Jennifer. As long as it stays away from a sentimental ending, we've got high hopes for this... but maybe that's just because we're swayed by Tina Fey being amongst the cast.

Surrogates
Bruce Willis rues Gamer in this adaptation of the Top Shelf comic wherein humanity have retreated to better living through robotics, only for someone - or something - to abruptly put an end to that happy shared delusion. Go for Bruce's wig, stay for the fact that, if it's anything like the original, it'll end up being a taut and exciting thriller that doesn't go for the easy answers.

With September already underway, we're a little late in providing this guide, but try not to hold it too far against us. We've split everything up month-by-month, to help you fill your calendar without too much worry - Just click on the links below.

September
October
November
December

Surrogates

Below are the first official TV spots for Surrogates:

Dollhouse

When the season premieres, the Dollhouse is still reeling from Alpha's attack, and the idea that he's still out there and has access to Dollhouse technology is very present in everyone's minds. The administration will be trying to balance finding Alpha with the daily business of the Dollhouse.

Sierra is still, um, servicing clients, and the first time we see her during the season, she will be coming back from an engagement. Then we will see her a couple of episodes later, when she will have a moment with Victor that hints at their continuing relationship. Dichen Lachman, who plays Sierra, says we'll see more stories focusing on her this season.

Meanwhile, as you'd expect, newly promoted security chief Boyd will be making sure that the Dollhouse functions smoothly, that the Actives are kept safe, and that the handlers have enough information to protect them. [Sci Fi Wire]

The Road

The first reviews of the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road are emerging, including one from Variety and another from The Hollywood Reporter. Both reviews discuss the film's heavy emphasis on flashbacks, the departure of Charlize Theron's character, and the central relationship between the father and son. As the father and son try to reach the warmer south where life may still be possible, the film's horrors are kept in the background, except for one scene where they find a house with a dozen naked, writhing men and women missing some limbs — stock for cannibals.

Supernatural

Here's the official description for the season's third episode, "Free to Be You and Me:"

Not sure he trusts himself anymore, Sam (Jared Padalecki) decides to give up hunting, but a late-night visitor (guest star Adrianne Palicki) won't let him off the hook that easily. Dean (Jensen Ackles), intent on stopping the Apocalypse, continues hunting on his own and teams up with Castiel (Misha Collins) to find the Archangel Raphael, as Castiel believes Raphael knows God's location.

[SPNsite]

Zombieland

A reader at /Film caught a screener of the film. He enjoyed the film overall, and his review only contained one particular spoiler: towards the end, Emma Stone's character Wichita and Abigail Breslin's character Little Rock end up calling for help from the top of an amusement park ride, after being far more capable than the male characters for the earlier portion of the movie. [/Film]

Pandorum

A few creepy new images from the space-horror thriller:

More at the links. [Fantasy.fr and UGO]

And here is a foreign one-sheet:

[Sci Fi Scoop]

The Green Hornet

Seth Rogen gets a few more guest stars, in the form of Tom Wilkinson (who played the memory-wiping doctor in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and David Harbour (who played Bond villain Gregg Beam in Quantum of Solace). [IGN]

Fringe

The eighth episode will feature a character named Christine Hollis, an attractive and feisty art student. [Spoiler TV]

Heroes

Elisabeth Rohm, who played prosecutor Serena Southerlyn on Law & Order, will play a character named Lauren Gilmore in the eighth episode. [Zap2it]

And here is the Season 4 sneak peek from the Season 3 Blu Ray set:

[Spoiler TV]

Smallville

Here's the official description for the Season Nine premiere, "Savior:"

Clark (Tom Welling) tells Jor-El he's ready to start his training, but Jor-El sends him back to Metropolis to cut ties with Lois before he can begin. Chloe (Allison Mack) is shocked when Lois (Erica Durance) suddenly reappears after having been missing for weeks, but Lois has no recollection of vanishing into thin air with the Legion ring. While investigating a monorail crash, Lois meets John Corben (guest star Brian Austin Green), a new reporter at The Daily Planet, with a negative attitude toward the Red-Blue Blur. Chloe begs Clark to use the Legion ring to go back in time to save Jimmy, but he refuses, driving a wedge into their friendship. Meanwhile, Oliver (Justin Hartley) continues down a dark road, and Zod (Callum Blue) arrives at the Luthor mansion.

[KryptonSite]

Warehouse 13

It looks like the Warehouse is going nuclear in next week's episode "Breakdown:"

[Movieweb]

Eureka

There's a lot of fur coming up in the season's 17th episode, "Have an Ice Day:"

[Pizquita]

FlashForward

The eighth episode will apparently feature a game of Texas Hold 'Em. [Spoiler TV]

Eastwick

The producers are looking for a Bradley Whitford or Jon Stewart type for Max, a recurring role as a charming, intelligent, and witty journalist who has come to Eastwick to steal Joanna's heart, and may end up being a love interest as well. [Spoiler TV]

The casting slides for Max depict a scene in which Max catches Joanna in a bar talking to herself, willing a glass of beer to move. Her mocks her for a bit, and she tells him that she is trying to recreate an experience she had. Max tries to prod details of the experience out of her, but she's pretty mum on the subject. He advises her that, if she wants to replicate the experience, she should try to replicate the feelings she had leading up to it, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. [Spoiler TV]

Another journalistic position has been filled, with Martin Mull cast as Milton, a retired reporter who's got dirt on the devilish Daryl Van Home.

[Spoiler TV]

And here are three new posters of the witchy women:

[Eastwick Fans]

Vampire Diaries

CW has released the official description for the third episode "Friday Night Bites:"

Elena (Nina Dobrev) tries to ignore Bonnie's (Katerina Graham) warnings about the disturbing vibes she got from Stefan (Paul Wesley). Tyler (Michael Trevino) tries to embarrass Stefan by throwing a football at him, but Stefan effortlessly catches and passes the ball back, impressing everyone with his skill. Mr. Tanner (guest star Benjamin Ayres) reluctantly lets Stefan join the football team. Elena invites Stefan and Bonnie to dinner, hoping that the two will bond, but the evening is disrupted by the unexpected and unwelcome arrival of Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Caroline (Candice Accola). Finally, the town is shocked by an act of violence.

[VampireSite.net]

In the sixth episode, we'll meet Alaric, who may become a regular character. Alaric is Mystic Falls' hot new history teacher. His charming, nerdy qualities will win over the the girls, but he has a dark, malicious side, and when his deadly agenda is revealed, all hell will break loose. [Spoiler TV]

And here are promo images from the second episode, "Night of the Comet:"

[Spoiler TV]

And still more from the third episode:

[VampireSite.net]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown and Charlie Jane Anders.

Pandorum:

Here are a couple of new TV spots for this space-horror epic:

Jennifer's Body:

A new behind-the-scenes featurette takes you behind the sexy horror of the horrific sexiness.

And Entertainment Tonight actually featured a clip of the Amanda Seyfried/Megan Fox kiss, plus Megan Fox talking about her character:

Surrogates:

More details on the footage that director Jonathan Mostow showed reporters: Bruce Willis and other surrogate cops are chasing a suspect in a helicopter, and the suspect is on a motorcycle. The suspect weaves in and out of Boston traffic, then abandons his motorcycle. He takes out some cops with his pulse gun, then shoots at the helicopter. Willis disconnects from his surrogate just before the blast hits, waking up in his apartment. Then he reconnects to his robotic surrogate and continues the chase, following the suspect into the surrogate-phobic reservation, showing how badass his robot body can be, jumping over shit and taking lots of damage.

And Mostow says Willis has "existential ennui" because the only crime that's left — crimes against people's robot surrogates — is a property crime rather than murder or whatever. (So why don't criminals just break into your house and stab your real body while you're controlling your robot body?) This makes Willis feel his job as a cop is meaningless, and he can't connect with his wife. Once Willis has to operate as his real self, he realizes just how hollow his robot-body-driven life was. [IGN]

9:

Star Elijah Wood was on Conan O'Brien the other night, and he talked about the numerology of this movie as well as Comic Con:


There's also this somewhat weird disturbing clip from his children's TV appearance, which has nothing to do with this movie, but it's too weird not to share:

Also, Wood and director Shane Acker talked to Sci Fi Wire, and explained a bit more about the film — we start out seeing through 9's eyes, and he knows as little about this world as we do. We follow him on his journey of discovery, and he convinces the other ragdolls to try and figure out more about who they are and what the machines are. They can't physically fight the machines because they're too fragile. So gathering knowledge is the only way they can win. Also, 7 (Jennifer Connelly) is a fiercly independent warrior who pushes everyone else away. She's a maverick. [Sci Fi Wire]

And here are a couple new featurettes, from what appears to be the film's official Youtube channel:

Gamer:

So we talked to Amber Valletta yesterday about being a sex-puppet in this sex-and-violence games movie. Apparently, the guy who controls her is sort of a disgusting slug, and he licks his lips in every single scene he's in. The two of them never appear together, though, because he's controlling her remotely. [UGO]

Dark Shadows:

One of the biggest challenges with this film is to recapture the weird tone of the original, says director Tim Burton, who certainly seems to think Johnny Depp will star in it, judging from the way he namedrops Depp. [MTV]

[Rec] 2:

Some new images from this sick-building-syndrome movie. More at the link. [Aullidos via ShockTillYouDrop]

Twilight:

The third movie, Eclipse, will feature Jasper doing a lot of fighting, says Jackson Rathbone. And there'll be some Civil War scenes giving his character's origin. [MTV]

Doctor Who:

A couple of tidbits from the forums over at Gallifrey Base. For one thing, IMDB is now claiming that Bruno Langley, who played Adam back in season one, will appear in David Tennant's final episode. Is Adam coming back to cause trouble again? Or is this another instance of the Doctor traveling back into his own past, like the thing where the tenth Doctor drops in on Rose before she's met the ninth Doctor? Oh, and there's a rumor — and I emphasize rumor — that a 1960s companion will turn up. But forum posters don't think it'll be Carole Ann Ford, because she's turning up in a Big Finish audio production, and those usually avoid using elements that are turning up on the TV show. [Gallifrey Base]

FlashForward:

Here's a new promo, featuring a confession of future infidelity:

Lost:

David H. Lawrence XVII, who played the puppetmaster guy on Heroes, Twittered that he landed a role in the final season of Lost. [The ODI]

Supernatural:

I don't think we've shown you this hilarious trailer, featuring some subliminal messages, before.

Smallville:

Here's a screencap from a new season nine sneak peek, featuring the Superman logo. Bigger version at the link. [The ODI]

Someone named LilMissX twittered a couple of promo photos of Chloe from the new season. [TwitPic via SpoilerTV]

And here's a sneak peek from the season opener, featuring Brian Austin Green making us all wish Sarah Connor was still being Chronicled.

Stargate Universe:

The season will end with an episode called "Subversion," followed by a two-parter called "Incursion." And that two-parter ends with "big-time cliffhanger," according to writer/producer Joseph Mallozzi, who calls it the "biggest HOLY #%&@! ending I have ever written." Because "Incursion" has been expanded from one hour to two, one other episode will get held over to season two — which means probably nobody much dies in that cliffhanger, or else they're able to rework the held-over episode somehow. [Gateworld]

Chuck:

Smallville's Kristin Kreuk will appear in multiple episodes as Hannah, a publishing industry veteran who meets Chuck on a flight to Paris. She loses her job and winds up working at the Buy More. And both Chuck and Morgan will have feelings for her. [EW]

Heroes:

So we already knew there would be more time travel this year, and now here are more details. Hayden Panettiere donned her old cheerleader outfit for some scenes that probably take place back during season one. And meanwhile, Hiro and Sylar filmed a confrontation in Odessa, TX that's probably set during the same era. Sylar throws Hiro up against a bus, and Hiro screams "Stoppp! I am dying!" And Sylar points his finger at Hiro's head. And here are some pics of both scenes — more at the link. [The ODI]

Also, Greg Grunberg says the thing where his Head-Sylar kidnaps his baby will all make sense. And he explains more of Matt's arc this season:

What's cool is that my powers evolve, and I start this year so regretting what I did last year that I have absolutely cut it cold turkey. I refuse to use my powers, and Sylar wants me to, so he's constantly on my shoulder going, 'Use your powers, you p-ssy.' It's great. It's really cool.

[Sci Fi Wire]

Creator Tim Kring says the upcoming "Redemption" arc could serve as the end of the show's story, but it doesn't have to.

We've never really posited an ending… [because] it's never been one long serialized story. Each volume has a beginning, middle and end. So we try to wrap things up pretty neatly each time and string a cliffhanger over the break to reward the loyal viewers.

[EW]

Eureka:

Here are some pics from episode 3x18, "What Goes Around." [SpoilerTV]

True Blood:

There's a plan in place for Evan Rachel Wood to return as Sophie the Vampire Queen next season. [EW]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.