1: Pump the atmosphere full of nanomachines to get "smart weather."

In Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds, people seed the oceans and the upper atmosphere with tons of tiny floating machines, "invisible to the eye, harmless to people." They controlled the weather and fixed the climate by reflecting radiation here or absorbing it there. The machines made clouds appear and disappear and controlled ocean currents. And it works — for a while. The climate starts returning to pre-2050 conditions. But then the nanomachines stop obeying orders, and even create an obscene symbol off the Bay Of Biscay "that had to be airbrushed out of every satellite image." The scientists try to release even smarter nanomachines to deal with the first batch of nanomachines and — well, you can guess how well that turns out.

2: A ring of ice.

In the Stanislaw Lem novel Fiasco, scientists launch an artificial ring of ice into the atmosphere of the planet Quinta to reduce temperatures so the oceans will recede and more land mass will be available. The mass of the ice ring is equal to around 1 percent of the oceans' volume. The protagonists speculate that the ring was created by causing lightning in the upper atmosphere to create a kind of ice rail-gun that could shoot the ice up into orbit. This being a Stanislaw Lem novel, the whole thing falls apart due to political wrangling before it can be completed, so huge chunks of ice rain down onto the planet's equator in a never-ending torrent.

3: Use special bacteria.

In the story "Noah's Ark" by Narendra Desirazu, we find bacteria on Mars, with bizarre properties — it hibernates just below the freezing point of water, but when the water melts, the bacteria goes into frantic activity to get the water to refreeze. So scientists struggle with the effort to introduce the bacteria only to the icecaps and other areas where they want to reverse melting — without letting it get into, say, our oceans and stuff. Luckily, there's a happy but "ambivalent" ending.

4: Build a giant sunshade around the Earth.

We build huge space elevators and a massive sunshade in The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod, causing the dawn light to look all trippy:

The dawn sky glowed innumerable shades of green, from lemon to duck-egg to almost blue, like the background colour in a Hindu painting, and turned slowly to a pure deep blue over ten minutes or more as he watched. He dozed again.

Also, Arthur C. Clarke's Fountains Of Paradise includes a ring of satellites and space stations linked together around a planet's equator by cables and other connectors, which becomes an unbroken wheel of tremendous stability — which presumably can reflect a lot of sunlight. And in Clarke's Childhood's End, the Overlords are able to use polarized fields to "make the sun go out" for a particular region of South Africa, to punish the residents for depriving the white minority of civil rights. And in Venus Of Dreams by Pamela Sargent, colonists cool the planet Venus by using a giant Parasol to shade the planet, plus bombarding the planet with ice asteroids.

5: Take Earth further away from the sun.

The Futurama episode "Crimes Of The Hot" is like a smorgasbord of global-warming solutions. We learn that humans stopped global warming in the 21st century by bombarding the oceans with ice from space. And now that the planet is heating up again, due to the emissions from unsafe robots, there are a few solutions, including a giant space mirror (which goes awry) and shutting down all the robots. But in the end, the easiest solution is to have all the robots emit their exhaust at once, sending the planet further away from the sun — and giving us an extra week in each year, which can be Robot Party Week!

And in the novel The Circle: A Science Fiction Thriller by Harold R. Watson, the High Rulers Of Earth decide to haul the planet away from the sun to put it into a deep freeze for one year. At the end of that time, they'll return Earth to its original orbit. As some of the planet's icy covering melts, it'll have the effect of restoring the ozone layer, and after about five years, enough vegetation will have grown to make the planet habitable again. Suuuure.

6: Hack The Human Genome

It's a radical solution, but it might be the only way. In the story "Dear Abbey" by Terry Bisson, a group of radical environmentalists come up with a plan:

Dear Abbey is a radical, long-range plan for saving the environment that will make Ted Kaczynski look like Mother Teresa. It involves an alarmingly complex but theoretically possible piece of genetic engineering that will, let us say, severely inhibit the ability of humans to degrade the environment. Severe being the operative modifier. You can't call it terrorism because no one will be killed, directly at least, and no one will even know for sure what is happening until it has been operating for at least a decade, by which time it will be too late to undo it. The human cost will be high but not nearly as high as the cost of doing nothing, or of simply continuing with the kind of pointless stunts for which the environmental movement is known.

7: Restart the Gulf Stream

Kim Stanley Robinson is the champion of depicting environmental disasters and geo-hacking projects, and his environmental thrillers Forty Signs Of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below deal with the disastrous effects of global warming. Among other things, Fifty Degrees includes scientists trying to restart the stalled Gulf Stream. The ice caps melt completely, and in the winter, Washington, D.C. hits fifty degrees below. So an enormous fleet of ships ventures out to dump millions of tons of ice into the ocean in the hopes of rebooting the Gulf Stream. A fleet of 3,500 oil tankers is available to transport the salt, and five hundred million metric tons of salt is needed — about two years' worth of total world production.

8: Shut down all our technology

I'm still not entirely sure what happened at the end of last year's "remake" (quotation marks are necessary here) of The Day The Earth Stood Still. Keanu/Klaatu was going to unleash nanomachines to disassemble everything on Earth, because that would save the planet. You know that makes sense! And then he changed his mind and did some kind of EMP-ish thing that made all electricity go out and all technology stop working. So the human race was allowed to survive, but with no technology. Keanu is merciful! All hail Keanu!

9: Open a big hole.

Global warming? No problem! Just open a dimensional gateway and pump all the extra heat somewhere else. That's the scheme that a science whiz comes up with in the Stargate Atlantis episode "Brain Storm" (featuring Bill Nye the Science Guy, among other luminaries.) Of course, it all goes horribly wrong and the gathering of eminent scientists is in danger of freezing to death.


Also, in the Syfy movie Lost City Raiders, the world is flooded due to global warming. And the Catholic Church has the answer — an ancient hole in the ground, which will drain off all the excess water to... somewhere. But you need to find the secret hidden keys to open it. It all makes perfect sense!

10: Kill the aliens who are causing the problem in the first place.

But of course, you know deep down that global warming can't really be the result of our own completely harmless activities. There must be aliens behind it — probably evil dinosaur aliens. In the Syfy original TV movie, Heatstroke, it turns out that dinosaur people have been secretly working to pump out greenhouse gases to raise our planet's temperature and prepare the way for their invasion. But the U.S. government knows about this and sends a secret taskforce (why not a whole army? Budget constraints, I guess) to stop them. The aliens are operating on a tropical island, where an ex-swimsuit model just happens to be shooting a new calendar. It's like synergy! Oh, and there's also The Arrival directed by David Twohy, where Charlie Sheen discovers that weird double-jointed aliens are producing greenhouse gases to mess us up and transform our planet. Good thing it's Charlie Sheen, then.


Oh, and the Silurians in Doctor Who And The Silurians also have a similar idea about raising the planet's temperature, but they don't get very far with it.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown. This post also would have been a lot harder to write without the never-ending awesomeness that is Technovelgy.com.

Bernard Herrmann

Herrmann is one of the most celebrated composers in Hollywood history, having scored classics from Citizen Kane to Psycho to Taxi Driver. He makes our list for his groundbreaking score for 1951's The Day The Earth Stood Still (pictured above), with its prominent use of the theremin. After this movie, use of the eerie, otherworldly, electromagnetic instrument became the signature sound of sci-fi scores.

Louis and Bebe Barron

The Barrons took Herrmann's innovation a quantum leap further with their score for 1956's Forbidden Planet, which featured not a single traditional acoustic instrument. The husband-and-wife team's collection of all-analog burbles and bleeps sounds delightfully retro today, but the movie's all-electronic score was, at the time, controversial. Still, the sounds ideally complemented the tale of an isolated planet beset by an invisible monster.

Jerry Goldsmith

Goldsmith's 1968 score for Planet of the Apes swung the pendulum back toward traditional orchestration for sci-fi movies. Well, sort of; his tense, percussive score (echoing Charlton Heston's attempt to hold onto his sanity) included a Brazilian instrument called a culka that sounds like hooting monkeys. Goldsmith would go on to write many other memorable sci-fi scores, notably, Alien (1979) and the majestic theme for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), which would be reworked for TV as the theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

John Williams

With the original Star Wars (1977), John Williams became the gold standard of sci-fi composers. His Wagnerian use of leitmotifs created instantly memorable themes for the major characters, and his grand opening fanfare is so thoroughly evocative of the movie that it instantly transports viewers back to the sense of awe and wonder they felt when they first saw that imperial cruiser fill the screen. Williams has scored just about every film Steven Spielberg has made; his five-note theme for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) became a character in itself.

Vangelis

The Greek new age composer is best remembered for his electronic score for Chariots of Fire, but his work on Blade Runner (1982) was similarly stellar, a mix of electronica, noirish brass, and traditional orchestral sounds that matched the movie's polyglot futurism.

James Horner

Yes, now he's known for syrupy goo like Titanic, but he got his start as a scrappy Roger Corman factory worker (Battle Beyond the Stars, 1980). He soon graduated to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), where he expanded on Jerry Goldsmith's score for the first movie to include nautical themes (fit for all those Moby-Dick references in the script). His elegaic music surrounding Spock's death and funeral was an early sign of Horner's ability to create music tearjerking enough to make a Vulcan cry. (Genre fans will also recall Horner's memorable scores for 1983's Krull and Brainstorm.)

Alan Silvestri

Silvestri, who's scored nearly every Robert Zemeckis film, is a disciple of John Williams who has a knack for creating a grandiose sound that makes his patron's movies seem bigger and zippier than they are. Case in point: his first big job, the Back to the Future trilogy (1985/89/90). Heard now, it instantly evokes Marty McFly zipping along on his skateboard, or Doc Brown firing up the time-traveling DeLorean. Silvestri's other genre works include Predator, The Abyss, and both Lara Croft movies.

Danny Elfman

Elfman, whose work is so closely associated with Tim Burton that he seems to be the musical portion of the director's brain, combines a reverence for traditional movie orchestration with an irreverence toward classical melody, bred perhaps of his days as the frontman for Oingo Boingo. The result is a frenetic, jumpy, off-kilter sound that's nonetheless grand and majestic, a sound that makes Elfman's music instantly recognizable, not to mention well-suited to such Burton genre pastiches as Ed Wood (1994) and Mars Attacks (1996).

Basil Poledouris

Poledouris created stately, mournful scores for movies with rugged, damaged heroes (the Conan the Barbarian films) and lent a gravity to Paul Verhoeven's science fiction films (notably, 1987's RoboCop and 1997's Starship Troopers) that helped ground their deadpan satire in real human emotions.

Bear McCreary

The ubiquitous 30-year-old composer (who'll be performing the score from Battlestar Galactica this Saturday at a free concert at Los Angeles' California Plaza, as well as next month at Comic-Con) is the sci-fi scorer of the moment, thanks to his television work on BSG and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. His tension-filled scores, mixing traditional orchestration with less orthodox instruments (accordion, bagpipe, duduk, erhu), is completely integral to his shows; particularly BSG, where his Middle Eastern/metal rearrangement of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" (familar and strange at once) was key to understanding the plot and characters.

You may not have liked this eco-conscious remake of the 1950s classic anti-nuke movie, but it's hard to deny the good intentions that went into making it the first green film to come from Fox. The studio has pledged to be entirely carbon neutral by next year, and Day the Earth Stood Still was their first effort. In this clip you see all the production staff talking about something how they turned the normally-wasteful filmmaking process into one that was completely green.

Pretty interesting stuff, and fitting for a movie about aliens who are really pissed off about how humans have treated the ecosystem on Earth. Watch for the DVD on April 7.

According to Variety, Derrickson will direct Hyperion Cantos, which combines the first two novels in the Hyperion series. The script will be written by Trevor Sands, who also recently completed work on the proposed movie version of The Six Million Dollar Man, which doesn't sound too promising, but I'm willing to be convinced.

Scott Derrickson to direct 'Hyperion' [Variety]

Variety reports that Reeves will take the role of Spike Spiegel, one of the two leads in the series that followed the bounty hunter crew of the spaceship Bebop through space in the year 2071. The movie adaptation will be written by Peter Craig, and produced by Reeves' Day The Earth Stood Still producer Erwin Stoff for the same studio, 20th Century Fox.

Keanu Reeves set for 'Bebop' [Variety]

You might have noticed this trope in the recent Day The Earth Stood Still meh-fest, when Keanu/Klaatu goes to the McDonald's to hang out with a fellow alien, who's been hiding out here for decades trying to decide whether we suck or blow. And doggone it, the old guy has totally lost his alien perspective. He loves McDonald's, for one thing. For another, he's seen enough movies to pick up that thing where he speaks a foreign language, until he's saying something really important — and then he switches to English.

Okay, sure, he still recommends that Klaatu sterilize the Earth. But he also encourages Klaatu to try those crispy apple pies first.

But he's not the worst sell-out. The worst is the Doctor from Doctor Who, who's totally gone human the first time we see him, in 1963's "An Unearthly Child." He's ditched his Gallifreyan tunic, with the attractive posture collar, for some pastiche of an English gentleman outfit. (I totally blame the lack of the collar for William Hartnell's bad posture.) But the worst comes in the early 1970s, when the Doctor spends a few years stuck on Earth and starts actually driving a car and eating at Wimpy's Burgers. (In the novelization of "Invasion Of The Dinosaurs." I think.) Did you ever eat a Wimpy Burger? They're a great example of truth in advertising.

Commenter Hamslicer points out that I somehow missed the aliens in Third Rock From The Sun, who get so assimilated they not only eat our junk food, they also get obsessed with our human innovations, like shampoo and conditioner in the same bottle.

Rule #1: You can always tell when an alien has gone human. They start eating our crappy fast food.

Sometimes they even forget their true nature, like Beth in that one Torchwood episode. She's an alien sent here to gather intelligence for an invasion, but she believes she's human — despite the huge spikes and alien tech that pop out of her arm like a really bad rash.

That's also sort of the premise of The Stranded, a Virgin Comics title that's (supposedly) being developed as a Sci Fi Channel series. Five amazingly stylish people realize that their entire childhoods are a lie, because they're Sleepers, aliens who were stranded here on Earth, with secret superpowers and stuff. (I think the Sci Fi version may be dead, which is too bad, because both the comic and the TV pilot were written by the great Mike Carey.)

Rule #2: Aliens who forget they're aliens always have amazing superpowers, and pretty great hair.

And then there are the aliens who remember they're aliens, and even keep sight of their reason for being here... but they just get obsessed with human trivia. Like Bridwell, from Astro City #5. He's been sent to Earth to decide whether his matriarchal insect-people race, the Enelsians, should invade. And he gets caught up in our trivial dramas, and obsessed with our petty vices, especially boastfulness. It's unfortunate he happens to live in the same building as the braggart superhero Crackerjack. But even Crackerjack's habit of taking too much credit for his exploits isn't enough to make Bridwell turn against humanity — it's a group of gossipy old ladies boasting that they always knew who Crackerjack was, that finally makes Bridwell decide to wipe us out. Humans!

Rule #3: Aliens who spend too much time here always get a little too close to our bad side.

Let's face it, the best kind of aliens living secretly on Earth are the ones who take over, without any of this "going soft" business. Like the aliens in They Live, who finally use our mass media and pop culture for the proper purpose — controlling us and turning us into brainwashed slaves. (But that means they have to work in the television industry, which is a kind of punishment.) Ditto for those aliens in the story "Four Eyes" in the anthology The Nightmare Room.

Of course, even when sneaky aliens manage to take over the Earth without losing their edge or getting distracted by all our shiny nice human culture, they still end up taking on our foibles and obsessions — like the alien parasite/symbiote creatures in Stephenie Meyer's The Host. (By then, of course, they're not secret any more.)

Rule #4: You can't even rule humans in secret without becoming sorta human.

The manga and anime of Osamu Tezuka routinely feature "reformed alien spies" as supporting characters, according to this fansite.

The animated version of Ambassador Magma, features a similar theme, as Murakami Tomoko, is killed and replaced by an alien. Tomoko was the mother of Murakami Mamoru, the main human character of the series, and the alien eventually became so absorbed in the role, that she believed that she was Murakami Tomoko, so much so, that she defended her ‘family’ against attacks by her own kind, losing her life in the process.

The Irresponsible Captain Tylor features an android spy named Harumi. However, she is much more than a mere spy, for she is the alien’s best intelligence analyst, and even a saboteur. Despite her best attempts, her attempts at sabotage always fail in humorous encounters with Captain Tylor’s dumb luck. Though she is an android and should be devoid of emotions, she eventually succumbs to the title character’s kindness and charm, and decides to switch sides.

Rule #5: Aliens! Don't make your spies too cute. It'll just backfire when they decide they enjoy our human fussing, and our fancy Earth ribbons.

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

Some spoilers ahead.

Unlike the rather slow and thoughtful 1950s movie that Earth Stood Still is based on, the remake opening today in theaters across the U.S. is closer to a typical actioner in structure. I love the original flick, but there's nothing wrong with making an action-packed homage to it. The question is whether the new flick works on its own terms. The answer is partly yes.

But even when it fails, Earth Stood Still manages to do something most other science fiction movies do not: It gives us convincing imagery of post-Singularity technology. And its relationship to the first movie is actually a lot more complicated than you might think. Here are three ways of looking at Earth Stood Still for you to tuck into your brain and take with you to the theater this weekend.

1. It's a cool alien science nerd movie that goes off the rails in the second act

Setting aside the question of whether director Scott Derrickson managed to do justice to the original - which I still maintain is the wrong question - Earth Stood Still is an uneven flick at best. For the first half of the movie, you've got a well-paced, visually arresting movie about the first alien contact between a mysterious creature and the human race. Keanu Reeves works nicely as Klaatu, the slightly robotic alien getting used to his new human body, and Jennifer Connelly is very believable as Helen, a brave astrobiology nerd caught up in an event she never expected to deal with.

Everything associated with Klaatu's arrival, including the gorgeous mystery globe ship, his biological spacesuit, and his scary-unknown powers, are pitch-perfect. You really feel like you're watching serious science fiction that's asking the same hard questions about humanity that a good drama would. Klaatu has come to decide whether it's time to scour the Earth of humans because we're killing off everything that makes the Earth valuable to the "civilizations" he represents.

But as soon as Klaatu meets another alien agent in a McDonalds, things start to go downhill. Instead of exploring the idea of the alien civilizations who've been watching and judging us for decades (centuries?), we go caroming off into a seemingly-pointless tour of some upstate New York forests and get a very superficial bad-Star-Trek-episode look at why Klaatu changes his mind about the "destructive" humans he wants to wipe out. There's a lot of unconvincing sentimentalism and Helen's kid (played by Jaden Smith) does a lot of acting with his hair.

The best thing you can really say about the second half of the movie is that Smith is not as annoying as most kids in movies like this. And there is some good action with Gort the giant robot, but scenes with him seem oddly wedged in between the scenes about Klaatu's moral dilemma. So you'll begin this movie with a sense that you're about to watch something really terrific, and end feeling like you just watched an episode of Star Trek where some alien realizes that humans aren't ugly bags of mostly water because they have religion, or music, or love, or feelings in general.

I mean, I love humans too - but do you really think a couple of boo-hoos are enough to convince a highly sophisticated alien race that it's worth risking a mega-valuable planetary resource on us?

Alright, let's move on from that to think about what Earth Stood Still gets right.

2. It's a way of imagining the Singularity

One of the best parts of this movie was the care its designers took with the futuristic alien technology we see - and luckily, we see a lot of it. One of the pleasures of good science fiction is feeling the way it jogs your imagination to think about what our machines will look like after the singularity, or after tech becomes so different that we can no longer recognize it.

Klaatu is obviously from a group of civilizations that have fine-grained control over matter and their genomes. He comes to earth encased in a biological spacesuit, and his consciousness has been placed in a still-developing human body. There are a few interesting scenes where he has to "get used" to things like drinking and eating, and of course in this updated version of the film our alien has some slightly preposterous but fun superpowers. He controls the behavior of electrons and photons with his mind, taking control of computer networks and projecting his mind through wires.

During the iconic interrogation scene which you've probably seen in previews, we even get a hint that there is something sublime about Klaatu's consciousness. He needs information from his interrogator, so he seems to project his mind into the other man's mind via the wires of a polygraph machine - when he finally says, "I'm leaving you now," the man is weeping as if sensing Klaatu's mind was both a beautiful and terrifying experience.

This post-Singularity technology can be seen in the updated Gort, who is made up of millions of microbots.

But perhaps most interesting of all are the hints about Klaatu's post-Singularity culture. We know he represents many worlds, and is seeking an audience with the U.N., perhaps because that international body reminds him of his own cultures' government. His culture also, it seems, believes in covert ops. They've had another hidden alien planted among humans for the past 50 years.

We assume, because Klaatu's on a mission to save Earth, that his culture must be somehow benevolent. But actually things are much more complicated than that. They're bloodthirsty, willing to wipe out an entire intelligent civilization to save "a planet capable of sustaining complex life." Instead of engaging in a technology-transfer program with humans so that we could develop sustainable energy, his civilization's first impulse is genocide. So Klaatu's culture may not be all that different from human's - in fact, in some ways, it seems more primitive.

I was pretty taken with the idea that this supposedly benevolent, save-the-Earth Klaatu was actually a member of the shock troops ready to scour Earth so other aliens could colonize it.

Now I have one final thought about the movie which might intrigue you if you liked the first film.

3. It's a sequel set 50 years after the first Klaatu fell to Earth

Obviously Earth Stood Still isn't really a remake, since it's set in the present day and our alien has such different capabilities from the Klaatu of the original. I would suggest that one way to look at it would be as a kind of sequel to the first film, taking place 50 years after the first Klaatu came to Earth and decided to blend in and live among us.

Though the first film ends with Klaatu coming out and meeting with world science leaders, imagine that another Klaatu stayed as an observer (we learn in the new movie that there are possibly many of them). Again, this is in keeping with the first movie's spirit, where Klaatu wants nothing more than to blend in among humans to get to know them. That's how he meets Helen and the kid.

Also, in the first movie, it appears that Klaatu's mission is more observational - he's come bearing a warning about our uses of atomics, but he hasn't been given the task of deciding whether to destroy humanity. He merely comes to see what humans are like, and it's only under duress that he offers a display of his civilization's power. Old Klaatu shuts off Earth's electricity as a peaceful way of demonstrating what his people could do: And he's careful to leave power on in airborne planes and in hospitals.

Consider the Klaatu of the new flick to be the guy that the aliens send after the first guy hasn't been able to convince humans to change their ways. He's the cleaner, the assassin. He takes the advice of the Klaatu who has been on Earth already, and initiates the homo sapiens destruct sequence only because the first Klaatu says humans are destructive and can't be changed. It's not new Klaatu's job to save humanity, or determine if it can be saved. But he winds us saving us anyway.

So there must be something radically democratic about Klaatu's society, after all. One lone assassin, chosen to destroy humanity if needed, can make policy decisions that change the course of our whole civilization. The problem with Earth Stood Still was that interesting ideas like this got left to lurk beneath the surface, and the plot we were stuck with was just too predictable to make our imaginations soar.

The Day the Earth Stood Still opens throughout the United States today.

Jon Hamm plays a scruffy faced scientist in the new remake of the 1950s classic. This new character's tie is loose, his hair is all disheveled and he spouts scientific factoids that make my heart go all a twitter. He's the exact opposite of his infamous Don Draper character from Mad Men. While we love watching Hamm get all mad scientist, we couldn't help but wonder what steely eyed, 60s ad sales man's man Don Draper would do in this situation.

How would Don Draper convince Klaatu not blow up the Earth?

Jon Hamm: [Laughs] I don't know man.
Jennifer Westfeldt: He'd give him a cigarette and a scotch and be like let's just chat.
Hamm: Yeah he'd sit him down and talk to him a little bit.

Do you think the Gort can hold his liquor?

Hamm: I don't want to... Gort can do anything he wants to that's the idea there.

Was it a lot of fun playing a scientist did you have to learn a lot of new words and terms?

Hamm: It was fun to be in a big movie, that's the exciting thing. It's just fun being on big movies, they're a lot of fun and a lot of people.

How did you prepare for the role?

Hamm: I had to do it quick that's for sure. Sort of between getting the script and getting the part and getting the job and getting on set was all about 72 hours. It was fast.

Jennifer Westfeldt: Read it a couple times on the plane

Hamm: Yeah seat 2D was my preparation.

Honestly I think a lot of lives would have been saved had Hamm come in as Draper. There is nothing that booze and smokes can't fix, besides maybe cancer. Also Jennifer Westfeldt is Hamm partner for many years and she's absolutely lovely, sigh.

You can see Hamm the man himself in The Day The Earth Stood Still this Friday in theaters.

Iron Man 2:

Don't expect the sequel to be more comic book-y and fantastical than the original film, warns writer Justin Theroux. It has to stay within Tony's world, which is the world of technology. And he and Jon Favreau have already settled on a villain. [IGN]

Terminator Salvation:

Here's the UK trailer for Terminator Salvation, which is basically the same as the U.S. trailer, just with a couple of shots from the Japanese version. [IGN]

Dragonball Evolution:

We already showed you the new international trailer for Dragonball Evolution, but now IGN has posted it in high quality sparkly video. [IGN]

And here are some new posters as well. [DBTheMovie]

The Day The Earth Stood Still:

Here's an extended clip that showcases a sequence you may have seen before, where Jennifer Connelly's character gets dragged out of her home to help investigate the arrival of a mysterious alien sphere.

Also, apparently I'm not the only person who didn't hear Keanu say "Klaatu Barada Nikto." Keanu and director Scott Derrickson got very bummed when Sci Fi Wire asked about it, because they recorded that line 20 times. Apparently Keanu says it backwards and forwards at the same time, or something. [Sci Fi Wire]

Knowing:

Here's a new pic from the Alex Proyas-directed film about a guy who finds a time capsule full of numbers that predict disasters. Like the previously released pics, it deals with a big plane crash, that confirms that the guy (Nic Cage) is onto something. Bigger pic at the link. [JoBlo]

Fringe:

The next batch of episodes will up the emotional stakes, as Peter's past bites him in the ass and Olivia's kid sister shows up, after being abandoned by her husband and four-year-old kid. We'll get to see sides of Olivia we've never seen before, but action is always a big part of the character's DNA. And she'll keep investigating her dead partner John Scott, who will reveal a huge wrinkle in the Pattern. [TV Guide via Fringe Television]

So what's going on with John Scott? Actor Mark Valley has some ideas. [Fringe Television]

Dollhouse:

Mind-wiped puppet for hire Echo can have as many as four assignments per episode, says Eliza Dushku. And the reason the dollhouse has no windows is because it's actually deep underground. And that giant Muay Thai boxing scene she mentioned shooting recently? Is between Echo and Paul (Tahmoh Penikett.) [SpoilerTV]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

The last nine episodes of season two will pay off all the stuff we've learned this fall, promises producer Josh Friedman. That includes the Summer-bot's malfunctions and the relationship between John and Riley. And a major character will die before the end of the season. [TV Guide via SpoilerTV]

So why exactly did Jesse travel back through time? It's because she has certain ideas about how things should be done, says Stephanie Jacobsen. [Sarah Connor Society]

Smallville:

And here's a new pic of the Legion of Superheroes, who see Clark as a pioneer in making the Earth a safe place for aliens. [OSCK]

Heroes:

A couple of new set pics from next spring's "Fugitives" storyline. Looks like Claire's making a little pitstop at Sam's Comics. Does this mean more Seth Green? Also, she just filmed a scene with the Puppetmaster guy, Doyle. [TenGossip and The ODI]

And here's a sneak peek from Monday's episode, where Ando schemes to rescue Hiro from his latest blunder. [Heroes Television again]

Also, in Monday's episode, heroes team up against each other, and villains reveal their inner angels. Peter and Nathan square off. Sylar has HRG, Claire, Meredith and Angela held captive inside the Company. Sylar and Claire face off, and one of Claire's parents will die — probably Meredith.

And in this spring's "Fugitives" arc, Matt's wife Janice will reappear, and Matt will realize that anyone who's in the heroes' lives is in danger as much as the heroes. There won't be much time travel, but we'll still somehow see more of Ando's past, and also possibly see the founding of the Company, in 1977. Mohinder will have an "uphill battle" to remove his powers. Sylar will search for more answers about his past, and this will (surprisingly) lead him to do more "awful and scary" things. [Heroes Spoilers]

Supernatural:

The show returns in January with four stand-alone episodes. The brothers investigate a haunted house. Then they meet a trio of aging magicians (including one played by Barry Bostwick.) They investigate a ghost at their high school and we see flashbacks to the brothers, aged 14 and 18. (We had some script pages from that episode a while back.) And then a dangerous siren enthralls the boys and makes them turn on each other, allowing them to say some stuff they've been bottling up all season. And in the longer run, Ruby pushes Sam to uses his supernatural powers, and Dean learns what the angels want from him. And it's not a good thing. [SpoilerTV]

Star Wars: Clone Wars:

In January's two-parter, George "Sulu" Takei plays Lok Durd, a creature who devises a nuclear weapon that kills organic life forms but leaves droids unharmed. And the peace-loving inhabitants of the grassy planet Maridun, the Lurmens, refuse to shelter Anakin and Ahsoka, because they think the Jedi are war-mongers — even though Lok Durd plans to test his weapon on their planet. The Lurmens are like Lemurs with an Irish accent. [TV Guide via SpoilerTV]

Batman: The Brave And The Bold:

January's episodes include even more awesome team-ups. A full-fledged Green Arrow teamup. Batman's mentor, the boxing hero Wildcat. An appearance by the original Blue Beetle (voiced by Wil Wheaton!). The Atom (Ryan Choi version) has to shrink down to microscopic size to battle a toxic infection inside Batman. The strait-laced Atom will have a hard time collaborating with the jovial Aquaman. [TV Guide via SpoilerTV]

Kyle XY:

Season three will be the most action-packed, as Kyle gives up on trying to be normal and starts using his powers more. Kyle goes looking for his girlfriend Amanda (who was kidnapped by the Latnok organization) and immediately gets himself captured by Latnok as well. Kyle fights his way out, then goes and finds his fellow test-tube kid, Jessi, and they team up to rescue Amanda. Kyle becomes more sneaky and tricky as he fights against Latnok. We meet a new Latnok leader, Cassidy, who wants Kyle to join them. And a Latnok scientist, Nate, who sees Kyle as a threat. Also, Kyle realizes he and Amanda can never share the bond he has with Jessi, even though he can't trust Jessi. Jessi, meanwhile, goes through some heavy stuff, and we learn to appreciate her more. [TV Guide via SpoilerTV]

Wonder Woman:

Here are some new stills from the direct-to-DVD animated movie, which premieres at New York Comic-Con. Wonder Woman is pissed, Steve Trevor is resolute, and Ares is kind of a bastard. Actor Alfred Molina, who voices Ares, says he went for "suave" rather than rough with the character. [Warner Bros.]

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

We also talked to Derrickson about the chances for a sequel to his remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and asked who would win in a fight: Neo or Klaatu?

The Earth Stood Still transmission will reach any possible civilizations currently orbiting Alpha Centauri approximately four years from now, in the year 2012.

So you're beaming The Day The Earth Stood Still into space?

I know. Can you believe that?

No, I can not. Why did you decide to do that?

I have no idea. Somebody did, and told me they did it. And then I found that out and thought, "Boy I hope I'm not the one responsible for bringing the evil aliens. I hope whoever finds it is nice."

I was going to say, is that really the message that you want to send to another galaxy? Are you happy with the message?

Yeah, very with what the movie has to say. I do think the movie is a pretty accurate reflection of human nature. It's what the original was. I tried to be faithful and true to that basic story and that basic theme.

The movie does end on a cliffhanger, you don't know what's going to happen next. Would you ever consider making a sequel?

Oooh. You know, probably not. Never say never though, how many directors have said that and then done it. I have no intention to at this point.

A lot of people are saying that the message of the film is to go green, sort of like an Inconvenient Truth. What is the message that you as a director wanted to bring?

This movie doesn't have an environmental message to it. I don't like message movies. This is a big entertaining popcorn movie. People are coming to be entertained. If it has any statement in it, it's about human nature, not about... I'm not telling the audience how they're supposed to act or what they're supposed to do or anything like that. It basically is saying, as human beings, we've gotten ourselves into some serious messes and that's too bad, that's unfortunate, and we're all paying the price for it. But sometimes that's what you have to do before you make the changes that you really needed to make in the first place. And I think that's what's happening.

Who do you think would win in a fight Neo or Klaatu?

Oh That's a good one. That's a really good question. All I know is the Earth would get ripped to shreds in the middle of that fight. Wouldn't want to be there for that one.

If all goes according to plan, this first intentional transmission of a movie can be reached at different parts of our solar system, according to the press release, Deep Space Communications Network estimates arrival times at:

(Distance from Earth – at the speed of light – and transmission time, as follows):

Moon: 0.000000038, 1.1991888 seconds
Sun: 0.000016, 8.41536 minutes
Mercury: 0.0000095, 4.99662 minutes
Venus: 0.00000476, 2.5035696 minutes
Mars: 0.0000076, 3.997296 minutes
Jupiter: 0.0000666, 35.028936 minutes
Saturn: 0.000135, 1.18341 hours
Uranus: 0.000285, 2.49831 hours
Neptune: 0.00046, 4.03236 hours
Pluto: 0.0006183, 5.4200178 hours

If the rest of the galaxy thinks were terrible people, I just want to say: I told you so. But it also begs the question, what movie should we send into space instead? The Day The Earth Stood Still opens in theaters this Friday.

One of the ways that Gort fights when he goes into offensive mode is that his entire huge body breaks down into a swarm of self-replicating microbots that look like metal insects. These microbots are tiny, but visible to the naked eye, and they fly in a giant formation, breaking down all organic substances in their path (buildings, trucks, humans). Basically they seem like a flying gray goo, or a nanotech disaster that eats everything. But they aren't. They are actually more like swarming microbots, a technology that's being developed in several labs across the world right now.

Most microbots look something like this one, a model used in the i-Swarm project where many tiny robots move in tandem and communicate with each other. Bots like this are the size of an insect, and are intended to behave like them too. They contain a microchip and can walk or fly, communicate via radio with each other or a home base, and may contain sensors that measure everything from the visual field to movement and sound. Right now, these kinds of swarming bots could be used as surveillance devices - scatter them over a wide area of enemy territory, and they can sense the movements of tanks or troops. Or they could be used in a disaster area to climb inside hard-to-reach areas to find out if there are any survivors.

Other types of swarming microbots, such as the magnetic swarming bots being developed at Carnegie Mellon, could easily become the tiny components of a giant robot like Gort. These bots, which you can see in the video from New Scientist below, can bond together to form any shape using magnets along their edges that they can turn on and off at will. So sometimes thousands of them might bond together into a giant robot shape. Then they could turn off their magnets and break into a million tiny pieces that eat through hardened military bases the way Gort does. Or that fly through Central Park in a massive, self-replicating swarm.

Gort is also based on the theoretical idea of a bot swarm that produces what's called a "utility fog," proposed by molecular manufacturing researcher J Storrs Hall and others. Basically a utility fog is a highly-advanced version of the magnetic swarming bots. But instead of magnets, they are covered in tiny robotic arms that can link many individual bots (called foglets) together in a lattice structure. The bots are small enough that when they link together they would create what appears to be a smooth surface - just like Gort's smooth, silvery body.

When they break apart, they form a "fog," just like the flowing, oozing shape that Gort takes when he breaks down into the microbots and they fly back to New York City. Explains Hall:

Imagine a microscopic robot. It has a body about the size of a human cell and 12 arms sticking out in all directions. A bucketful of such robots might form a 'robot crystal' by linking their arms up into a lattice structure. Now take a room, with people, furniture, and other objects in it — it's still mostly empty air. Fill the air completely full of robots. The robots are called Foglets and the substance they form is Utility Fog, which may have many useful medical applications. And when a number of utility foglets hold hands with their neighbors, they form a reconfigurable array of 'smart matter.'

Right now, the utility fog is just theoretical, but the i-Swarm bots and the magntic microbots are being perfected in the lab. The ultimate goal is to create something like Gort, capable of taking many forms to get a job done. Hopefully, though, our swarm bots will never have the job of scouring humans from the Earth.

SOURCES:

Shape-Shifting Robot Forms from Magnetic Swarms [via New Scientist]

Utility Fog [via Nanotech Now]

i-swarm [via i-swarm]

Land Of The Lost:

This Sid-And-Marty Krofft remake just released its official synopsis:

Will Ferrell stars as has-been scientist Dr. Rick Marshall, sucked into one and spat back through time. Way back. Now, Marshall has no weapons, few skills and questionable smarts to survive in an alternate universe full of marauding dinosaurs and fantastic creatures from beyond our world—a place of spectacular sights and super-scaled comedy known as the Land of the Lost.

Sucked alongside him for the adventure are crack-smart research assistant Holly (Anna Friel) and a redneck survivalist (Danny McBride) named Will. Chased by T. rex and stalked by painfully slow reptiles known as Sleestaks, Marshall, Will and Holly must rely on their only ally—a primate called Chaka (Jorma Taccone)—to navigate out of the hybrid dimension. Escape from this routine expedition gone awry and they’re heroes. Get stuck, and they’ll be permanent refugees in the Land of the Lost.

[Movies Spoilers]

Star Trek:

TrekMovie talked to co-writer Roberto Orci, and he gave out a few morsels of Trek knowledge. Like, in Orci's mind, Captain Robau (Iron Man's Farah Tahir) was born in Cuba but grew up in the Middle East, before becoming captain of the U.S.S. Kelvin. And the alien security officer on the Kelvin, Alnschloss K’Bentayr (right), isn't directly related to Mr. Arex from the animated series, but the designer may have thought of Arex somewhat.

Also, that cop in the trailer is probably a human under all that robo-stuff, but the movie doesn't make it clear either way. And there is some explanation for why the Enterprise is being built in Iowa. And he says the humor won't be as broad as it was in his Transformers — like Kirk never pees on anyone. [TrekMovie]

The Day The Earth Stood Still:

So I just saw this movie, and I was listening for the phrase "Klaatu Barada Nikto," which we'd been promised, and I didn't hear it. But now, Keanu says in an interview that he sort of mutters it at the start of the movie, right after he gets shot. And it means "Stand down." (It keeps Gort from putting the smackdown on all the soldiers after they shoot Klaatu, I guess.) [Boston Herald]

Wolverine:

A guy who knows a guy says that Banshee (an Irish mutant with a sonic scream) will turn up in the Wolverine movie, with a non-speaking role. He'll be a younger version, in his early twenties. [ComicBookMovie]

Heroes:

Kristen Bell won't be back, but someone else will. [EW]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

The first episode of 2009, episode 2x14, will be called "Good Wound," and it airs on Friday Feb. 13. [SpoilerTV]

Fringe:

Jared Harris, who plays Mr. Jones, says his character will definitely be back at some point, possibly a few times. [Sci Fi Wire]

Lost:

Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse released a new video in anticipation of season five. They revealed that Ben Linus will be reading James Joyce's Ulysses, and episode seven of the new season is called "3:16," which is significant for a couple of reasons. And they revealed a new Dharma symbol, with a phallic lantern in the middle. [E! Online]

Smallville:

The title of the season's 16th. episode, "Turbulence," refers to interactions between Clark and Tess aboard Oliver's jet. Also, the turbulence associated with Jimmy's emergence from his coma. Tess takes Clark with her to an important press conference in another city. (And I'm just guessing this means she, and everyone else, have forgotten they learned he was an alien in the previous episode.) Clark tries to find out from Tess exactly how much Lex told her about him. When Jimmy sees Davis, he reacts violently, and also has an angry outburst at Chloe. And Davis goes to a cathedral, where he confesses he's hurt people he cares about.

And then in episode 17, "Hex," we meet that Zatanna-esque character we mentioned. And she casts a spell that turns Chloe into Lois, literally. Does wackiness ensue? We think it might just. [KryptonSite]

Also, Jimmy will actually witness Davis murdering someone... but is he hallucinating? Or has he discovered Davis' secret? And when Chloe is confronted with this news, whose side will she take? [EW]

More details on those events come from a set of casting sides for "Turbulence." In the teaser, Davis confesses to a Catholic priest about the people he's hurt and the beast within, and the fact that he he roams the streets looking for lost souls to help out. We see a scene where Davis finds a teenager buying drugs, and grabs him by the scruff of the neck, screaming "Go home!" Then he catches up with the drug dealer. The dealer is relieved to realize Davis is no cop — but then finds out Davis is something much, much worse.

And later, Jimmy is in hospital and sees a dissheveled man running for his life. The man gets in an elevator but doesn't manage to escape. And then Jimmy sees the attacker's face: Davis. But later, Jimmy is freaking out and Davis is super calm. They get Jimmy hopped up on meds and send him home. Chloe is v. pissed at him. [SpoilerTV]

And a new CW Winter trailer shows a bunch of clips from various shows, including Clark acting quite Superman-like, and a bit of Supernatural as well. [OSCK]

True Blood:

Here are a passel of new characters who will be joining the show in the second season, including which ones will be getting naked. (Handy!)

[SID MATT LANCASTER] This small, fatherly-looking man in his 60s is the Stackhouse family lawyer, who arrives at Sookie’s house unexpectedly. Obviously distraught, he’s sad to be the bearer of bad news…9 speeches & 3 lines, 1 scene (29)

[SHAWNELLE] “Trouble on legs,” this sexy barfly in her 20s propositions Jason (Ryan Kwanten), and when that fails, tries to work her wiles on his companion, Hoyt. She’s a real siren, out for a good time…2 speeches & 3 lines, 1 scene (44)

[CORALEE] This bar patron in her 30s is questioned by Andy about the recent murder. She’s gossiping about the death with her friend Vonetta when the angry Terry throws them out of the bar…2 speeches & 3 lines, 1 scene (44)

[VONETTA] Coralee’s friend, this bar patron in her 30s gossips avidly about the recent murder — right up until Terry throws her off the premises…1 speech & 2 lines, 1 scene (45)

[NEWS ANCHOR] Via satellite, this female news anchor in D.C. interviews Steve Newlin and Nan Flanagan, who exchange their explosively opposite views on the air…1 speech & 2 lines, 1 scene (21)

[SARAH NEWLIN] Late 20s - bright, pretty, cheerful wife of Fellowship of the Sun head Minister Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian), Sarah is an example of the new “hip” evangelical movement, hates vampires with a passion, deeply believes in her mission, her marriage, her country and her church. very feminine, but down-to-earth, also with a healthy appetite for life’s many pleasures… as she sees it, it’s all part of God’s gift to us. No actual nudity, but implied…SERIES REGULAR 7/13

[DAPHNE] Late 20s / early 30s - Daphne is sexy and down to earth, a real country girl, not the greatest waitress, but Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) couldn’t care less, once he gets to know her better. Common sense, no-nonsense, funny, definitely not neurotic. Nudity is preferable in this role…6 episode arc beginning with this episode.

[LUKE] A BIG HANDSOME, BEAR OF A GUY, around 25ish. All the energy Jason (Ryan Kwanten) has spent in his life getting girls, Luke has spent in the service of God. And growing. And being insanely competitive. Southern, Texan. no nudity required, although the guys at the church camp do spend time in their underwear…6 episode arc beginning with episode 202.

[True Blood]

Knight Rider:

And because no day is complete with Knight scoopage, here's a behind the scenes video of possibly the last ever episode. [KRO]

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

Bradbury’s script outline for The Day the Earth Stood Still II: The Evening of the Second Day opens on Christmas Eve, thirty years after the events of the original film. Chris Atkins, an employee at the Vehicle Assembly Building for the Apollo Mission, witnesses the landing of an alien spacecraft, a sight he half-remembers from his childhood. It is revealed that someone left the spacecraft, and NASA officials are on the lookout for him, her, or it. But Atkins has a vague feeling about the ship, a feeling he describes with a vague bit of dialogue:

ATKINS

Maybe we don't search. Maybe we wait for it to find us.

DIRECTOR

Why should it do that?

ATKINS

Because — it knows one of us.

DIRECTOR

Who?

ATKINS

Me. I think. I have a hunch.

DIRECTOR

I hope your hunch is scientific.

ATKINS

And how will your search pay off?

DIRECTOR

It won't. Get home. It's Christmas Eve.

So Atkins returns to his boarding house, where he suspects one of his fellow boarders of being the alien visitor. First he suspects the cockney reporter, but while he’s trimming the house’s Christmas tree, a young woman hands him the star for the top. She is radiant and beautiful and Atkins falls instantly in love with her. So naturally she’s the alien.

The alien woman takes off and Atkins pursues her. He eventually catches up with her (after opening her ship with the words “Klaatu barada nikto”) and learns that she is Klaata, Klaatu’s daughter. Klaatu has died, but Klaata has traveled to Earth with his body to continue his work.

At first, Atkins is excited by her arrival, and the prospect of a messianic arrival on Christmas Eve turns him poetic:

ATKINS
Time for a Second Annunciation?

She knows what he is speaking about. The knowledge of the Biblical Annunciation is in her glowing face as she turns back to him.

YOUNG WOMAN [Klaata]

What would you like to have announced?

ATKINS looks from her to the world far across the land, past the silent gantries.

ATKINS

That this Christmas morn, we get the grandest gift that man ever got. That something incredible and wonderful is about to happen, that will change us forever and be only for the good!

The mood turns sour when Atkins realizes Klaata has come to judge humanity, as he is sure that humans have failed to carry out Klaatu’s edict to change their ways. But Klaata assures him it isn’t so dire:

KLAATA

You've behaved better than you think. That's why we delayed. You're strange people. You've actually done some things right!

ATKINS
Like what?

KLAATA

Don’t you know? Must I, from some other world tell you? Thirty years ago people still died from polio, malaria, scarlet fever. You've stopped all that. Your country invented new kinds of wheat and corn. You send food to 90 countries. Immigrants pour into your land, 500 thousand a year. Why are they coming here if you're as bad as you say?

It appears that by judging humanity, Klaata means she’s judging the US. Do the people dying of malaria in Africa not count?

But Klaata tells Atkins that she has come to Earth not as Santa Claus, but as an extraterrestrial Grinch. After demonstrating her awesome ability to unmake matter, she reveals to him her plan:

KLAATA then explains in some detail what their plan, her plan, KLAATU's plan, is. To let the panic grow in little starts and stops, little vanishings, little disappearances, at first unnoticed. Who cares, for instance, if a11 the tiddlewinks in the world vanish on the same day? Or all the collar-stays? Or all the pennies which now burden us and are almost worthless?

Somewhere down the line – OIL.

Where Klaatu warned humanity to abandon its violent ways, Klaata mostly wants us to end our dependence on oil. Before she leaves, she gathers military officials and world leaders to witness a demonstration of solar power, implying that Atkins should help lead them all into an era of alternative energy.

But Klaata isn’t taking any chances. She gives Atkins a list of problems humanity must solve within the next twenty years, or else face certain destruction. She gives him a small cube into which he must feed data from their assignments. Atkins apparently contemplates gaming the cube, but Klaata isn’t having any of it:

KLAATA

No. Don't even think it. You can't fool Gort.

ATKINS
Gort?!

That’s what everyone in the theater would have been thinking had this ever managed to get made. Did they dismantle Gort? Did he have an accident with a trash compactor? Klaata says this is Gort’s heart, but never says whether the rest of his body is lying in wait to enact humanity’s destruction.

Klaata promises her that if Atkins is a good boy and fulfills all of the duties on the list, humanity will be saved and the two of them will be rejoined:

KLAATA

If you have done as you say you will do, grown to fit your promise, given yourselves back to yourselves as a gift, then place this cube, still lit, in your space machine. You wi11 travel faster than Death can follow. This will take you to our world.

ATKINS

Where the angels of the Lord will sing and dance and shout our welcome?

KLAATA
Where I will be waiting.

They share a bittersweet kiss before Klaata departs, leaving Atkins to ponder whether humanity’s salvation or the promise of future alien nookie is a better incentive for solving the energy crisis.

[Scifi Scripts]

According to Masters, the crew enlisted the aid of a sex toy manufacturer to create a lifelike skin for Klaatu when he first arrives on Earth, before he takes on human guise. Says Masters, alien skin is

made of dermal plastic and silicone. We actually hired a gentleman who worked in the sex toy business. He had the greatest materials I’ve ever seen. We brought him on and we bought a sex toy making machine and now we can make this weird stuff that nobody else can make.

It has an amazing translucency and an amazing flexibility. These are things I don’t usually relate to sex, but it’s apparently what they do. We’re making a lot of the skins out of that.

And apparently, getting shot is the catalyst that transforms Klaatu from his dildo self into the regular Keanu incarnation:

[Klaatu] comes out of his orb looking grey, but he’s more translucent. That’s the CG, to be created by WETA digital down in New Zealand. He gets shot, he falls into Helen’s arms, bleeds all over her. All CG at that point. As he’s losing his life force he becomes less translucent and more opaque. We do a timecut transition, a helicopter trip to the O.R. Once he’s being pushed down the hallway in his hyperbolic chamber, that’s when he’s a practical piece. We rush him into the O.R. and do all these surgery scenes. Until we do the big reveal, which reveals the inner being.

To read more spoilers and juicy bits from the interview go to Rope Of Silicon. TDTESS releases on December 12.

The Day The Earth Stood Still:

When all seems lost, an unusually serious John Cleese shows up to talk to Klaatu in this movie remake. And, according to director Scott Derrickson, Cleese tells Klaatu that "it is human nature for us to destroy each other. But it is also human nature to have to get into those really difficult messes before there is enough motivation and enough admission of the truth to make the significant changes that are necessary for us to evolve." [Discover Magazine]

Dragonball:

Emmy Rossum says the movie's big Goku/Piccolo fight is awesome. And her character is an intellectual scientist who rides a motorcycle and fights using martial arts. [DBTheMovie]

Transformers: Revenge Of Fallen:

Tyrese Gibson shoots down rumors that his character dies in the new movie, because "I am too sexy to die." [TransformersLive]

Another day, another toy spoiler. This time, it's the toy that supposedly shows how Laserbeak will look in the new movie. Laserbeak!! More pics at link. [TFW2005]

Push:

Here's a new international trailer for this Hong Kong superteen movie, that includes a bit more telekinetic fighty action.

Doctor Who:

The official site has been updated with a game that unlocks some new pics from "The Next Doctor," and a script excerpt featuring a sinister figure turning up at a funeral. [Planet Gallifrey]

Meanwhile, what's the deal with the "Other Doctor"? David Morrisey sort of doesn't explain. Except more hints that his Doctor has "major issues." [SpoilerTV]

Flash Forward:

A new casting call gives a couple of plot hints for this David S. Goyer/Brannon Braga show where everyone in the world blacks out for 2 minutes and has a vision of the future. (Based on the Robert Sawyer novel.)

A sassy British agent, Agent Banks, is having a meeting with Gough about a case, Gough's vision of the future. Gough contacts her, and she confirms that she shared the same vision in every particular. Meanwhile, a South African woman, Kathleen DeVries, calls Dominic (John Cho) to warn him of his appearance in her own disastrous future vision. [SpoilerTV]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

That Navy sub episode we mentioned includes a pair of identitical twins playing Navy sailors. It's hinted that there may be identical models of Terminator infiltrating the U.S. military. (Why would that be useful? More likely, it's the real human and the cyborg replacing her, which the show's already done a few times.) [E! Online]

Star Wars: Clone Wars:

Here's a promo pic from Friday night's episode, where Jedi Master Kit Fisto explores the "Lair Of Grievous," along with his former Padawan, who's tempted to go to the dark side. The clips on the Clone Wars movie DVD made me pretty excited about this one. [Warner Bros.]

Stargate Universe:

The first episode of this youngsters-trapped-in-space spinoff is called "Air," and it introduces the young team and gets them aboard the Ancient ship Destiny, which was sent out aeons ago to explore worlds that another ship had previously seeded with Stargates. [GateWorld]

Smallville:

New casting sides reveal plot details for 8x17, "Hex." Oliver meets Cassie, a witch who has lots of pictures of him. She needs Ollie to steal something for her — an item which Lex Luthor collected before he disappeared. (Sounds like she's Zatanna? She talks about her dead magician father.) Cassie offers to bring Ollie's dead parents back, and he tells her the object is too dangerous for her to possess. [SpoilerTV]

Heroes:

Daphne isn't on that plane that crashes during the "Fugitives" arc, killing a bunch of people. Instead, she's looking for our heroes, including her true love Matt Parkman. And the people chasing the heroes are being paid by the government. [E! Online]

Meanwhile, it's still true that a perky blonde heroine (involved in a hot romance) appears to die, but it's all a coverup. And Peter will get his abilities back within a few episodes. And in "Fugitives," we'll learn that Nathan and Tracy's main objective isn't just to create supersoldiers, it's more to do with command and control issues. Having soldiers at Guantanamo Bay who can literally see through people could turn out to be very useful. [E! Online again]

Chuck:

In an upcoming episode, Morgan passes off the task of hiring a new coworker to Jeff and Lester, who trick some Sports Illustrated models into thinking they're actually trying to hire a cover girl for the Buy More catalog. And when the girls find out they've been had, they take it out on Chuck, smacking him across the face. In that same episode, Morgan has to disrobe right after the aforementioned models, which is not a good comparison. And he drags his feet on moving in with Anna. And here's video. [E! Online]
 
 
Supernatural:

Dean plays chess with the Grim Reaper in the upcoming "Death Takes A Holiday." [E! Online]

The Survivors:

In an upcoming episode, according to star Julie Graham, "we come across a group of travellers and one of the women is pregnant. She lost her children to the virus but is expecting again. We had these beautiful twin boys on set taking turns to play the newborn son." [People.Co.UK]

Knight Rider:

What's in store for the last batch of episodes of this chatty car show? Admit it, you're curious. Star Jason Bruening has some hints about the appearance of KARR and the non-appearance of most of the show's supporting cast. [Knight Rider Online]

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

Reeves talked to the LA Times about the new version of the classic, which is released this Friday:

I'm not a big remake guy so the question was, 'Why?' ...Scott [Derrickson, director of the remake] had a why. He had a real respect, not a reverence, but a real appreciation for the original. He thought that story of the alien coming to Earth with a warning, a perspective outside of what humans can see, was a worthwhile tale, and he's right.

Worthwhile, yes, but doesn't that mean that everyone could've just watched the original and gotten exactly the same worth? Or is the sight of Jennifer Connolly and Mad Men's Don Draper looking concerned somehow more helpful in teaching us an important lesson?

Keanu Reeves' freaky flights of fancy [LA Times]

Apart from the look of the trusty robot Gort, this film has left the 1950s design sensibility far behind, and Brisbin says that's a deliberate choice.

[Director] Scott Derrickson was very clear that the look of this remake had to be very different from the original. I agreed 100%. In 1951, no one had been to outer space. Today, EVERYONE has been to outer space – with Kubrick, with Lucas, with Neil Armstrong, with Spock. (Not to mention with the original Gort and Klaatu.) The audience innocent of outer space doesn't exist any more. For Scott, the key emotional marks to hit in this new version were FEAR and WONDERMENT. Everything we aimed for was about delivering those sensations in a 21st century context for a 21st century audience.

The most striking part of the new film are those huge glowing spheres, which you see dissolving everything.

Brisbin says everyone involved with the movie worked hard to get those right:

The colour and texture of the spheres was absolutely central for me in the overall palette and 'design mood' of the movie. Scott Derrickson made the final calls on precisely where we landed — but getting there was an intensely collaborative process; all the visual players in production, our producers, and the key creative heads in the studio were genuinely engaged with getting the spheres right. The sphere concept was one of the most radical departures from the 1951 movie, and we were all committed to orchestrating something that was viscerally sublime and technically graceful. Scott's basic emotional directives of FEAR and WONDERMENT were our 'guiding lights.'

I had strong feelings about the ideal colour zone for the spheres and we did hundreds of sphere studies in the art department. Our visual effects supervisor, Jeff Okun, brought critical insight to the table on how surface movement could contribute, and some great studies were done by pre-viz artists on his team. Our DP, David Tattersall, was concerned about how the coloured sphere light would interact with the actors' faces and hazmat helmets and did careful tests on that front. Obviously, a right answer could only come from an integration of design, CG and lighting concerns. In the end, I think we all felt confident that this dynamic surface, with the ability to change colour but rooted somewhere in the aqua realm, would hit all the essential marks.

The new TDTES includes scenes of New York getting trashed by Klaatu's spheres. So I asked Brisbin if he feels like movies like I Am Legend and Cloverfield have erased the post-9/11 taboo on destroying New York.

The decision over whether to set in New York (because the UN is there — a story point) or in Washington DC (as in the original) was very carefully and respectfully worked out between Scott Derrickson and the studio. The choice of NY was not taken lightly. But it felt like a right call to me for story reasons. As for taboos — in my personal opinion — time does not (and should not) erase historical tragedies; but Western story telling (right back to the Greeks) has always included the effort to find some solace by veering close to hard realities. That said, it does seem better not to be the first revive the traditional role of NY as a stand in for civilization, with all the hard story knocks that entails.

One thing that jumped out at me from the trailers was the fact that the humans take the alien Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) to a very sterile-looking facility, maybe underscoring how far away humans have gotten from nature. (Which plays into Klaatu's message that we're wrecking the planet.)

But Brisbin says he wasn't thinking in terms of making the Army facility look unnatural. Instead, he wanted to create a look that captured what present-day humans would consider advanced, so he could juxtapose that against the much more advanced human tech. "In some parts of the story, this pointed to clinical. In other parts of the story, it pointed to chaotic. When the story hits full burn, clinical and chaotic are both in play."

The one topic Brisbin couldn't really talk about was the design of the new Gort, which reportedly went through several different ideas before arriving at the fairly traditional version you've seen in the trailers. Brisbin says, "Can't talk about this one until the release except to say that it was an intense process and was taken very seriously by all involved!"

When not working on projects like Earth Stood Still, Brisbin has directed his own documentary about the role of hats in Cambodian culture, Nice Hat!. He's spent a lot of time in Asia, and sees his documentary as part of a focus on bringing people to places they've never been. I asked him if he thinks Asian futurism will become more influential in the 21st century. He says, "I think the West is already quite saturated with Asian influence (both futuristic and anachronistic) more than we tend to realize. I have no doubt that this will continue, along with all the rest of the global cross-pollination that engulfs us. The goal, surely, is sharing without making everything generic."

The Day The Earth Stood Still hits theaters next Friday, December 12.

Much as many fans today fear that the The Day the Earth Stood Still remake won’t do justice to the original, so too did Thomas feel that Hollywood had distorted Bates’ short story. And he sought to do a more faithful adaptation, albeit with some changes. He wrote in the September 3rd issue of Worlds Unknown:

Never mind that Hollywood, in enlarging upon the bare plot of the story, had likewise reduced its scope by making Klaatu, and not the eight-foot robot, the Master of the title. Never mind that it was murked up a bit at the end (a la “The Incredible Shrinking Man” of a few years later) by a misbegotten “message,” 1950’s style.

This was The Story.

[Diversions of the Groovy Kind via Sci Fi Wire]

G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra:

Well, I lasted three days without posting any toy spoilers. Here are some MARS figures that are tie-ins with the new film. More pics at the link. [ToyArk via IESB]

Watchmen:

My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way says his band's Bob Dylan cover is integral to the ending of the movie. And he weighs in on the controversial changes to the graphic novel's ending:

I personally loved the giant squid – and I’ve always loved giant squids – but from what I’m hearing, the changes he’s made reels it into the actual characters, and actually, in some ways, makes more sense.

[MTV]

The Day The Earth Stood Still:

Keanu Reeves says the film is about "the human character, human nature, the fact that it is only when our backs are up against the wall that we do anything to change our behavior." Sounds as though the film ends with humans promising to stop trashing the environment, in exchange for Keanu not smiting us. He also says:

In our film, Klaatu is making a judgment about whether the human species will live or die, although it is much more than an eco message. Klaatu says: “Your backs are against the wall, you have to change the way you are or cease to exist.”

And he adds that Klaatu starts out totally alien and then slowly learns to relate to humans. [Business Mirror]

And here's a new behind-the-scenes featurette on the film, featuring a bit more footage and the stars talking about it. Keanu gives away more of the film's ending, when he says nobody can withstand Jennifer Connelly's puppy-dog eyes, not even an alien. A similar featurette, with slightly different footage, aired on Entertainment Tonight, and you can view that version here. Plus there's a new international trailer. [IGN]

Dragonball:

It's rumored this film's title has changed to Dragonball Evolution. [DBTheMovie]

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button:

Cinemablend has already seen this movie and their review includes a few spoilers. There's a framing device, involving Cate Blanchett's character Daisy on her death bed, reminiscing about her love affair with Benjamin Button. It's the eve of Hurricane Katrina. Daisy's daughter reads from Button's diary, learning about her real father, who was born old and aged backwards. Everyone predicts the elderly baby will die from age-related ailments, but instead he thrives. His father abandons him, so he gets adopted by a woman who works at an old folks home, where he fits right in. Eventually, he de-ages enough to hobble out of his wheelchair and get on a tugboat. and the film skips over the question of what happens to Button when he looks like a teenager but is really old. (Something the Fitzgerald story, incidentally, dwells on.) [Cinemablend]

Doctor Who:

Penelope Wilton, who played the former Prime Minister Harriet Jones, says that "when you are exterminated on Doctor Who, chances are that you are not dead at all. I could simply have gone to another galaxy. You never know – I might make a return." I so want her to team up with Sarah Jane and fight aliens together. [Planet Gallifrey]

Lost:

More Dharma-centric filming? Someone came across a scene involving Kate, Hurley and a VW camper. [SpoilersLost]

And here are some promo pics showing that the cast is, indeed, still pretty. [Lyly Ford]

Torchwood:

Not much of a spoiler, but I listened to a whole podcast to get to it. Gareth David-Lloyd says it's conceivable the fourth (missing) Torchwood office is in Toronto, and he'd be up for doing a storyline set there. [Hardcore Nerdity]

Heroes:

As we mentioned, episode 3x17, "Cold War," is all about HRG, along the lines of "Company Man." And there's an intense sequence where HRG and Matt are locked in a "mental intense interrogation," and they're both out of breath and trying not to faint. They almost pass out. And HRG has some scenes with Nathan as well. [Heroes Television]

Does Peter get his powers back? Hmmm. Well, Greg Grunberg just Twittered this pic of Milo Ventimiglia preparing to do some kind of flying stunt. Click to enlarge. [Heroes Spoilers]

Fringe:

Episode 11 will be called "Bound" and will air on Jan. 20. [SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

The new Sci Fi Magazine includes some spoilers. Chloe and Jimmy will try to manage life after their wedding but it won't be easy. Doomsday's story doesn't end well, as you can imagine. And Tess will unleash her army of supervillains at some point. Also, Clark has a harder time making a new hero identity for himself, because his identity as Clark Kent is already a lie in a sense. Depending on whether there's a ninth season, the eighth season will either end with a heroic sendoff, or a heartbreaking decision for Clark. [SVGurl]

In the Jan. 15 episode, maybe you see Clark flying. Or maybe he's just leaping a tall building in a single bound. [TV Guide]

A new Doomsday-centric mid-year trailer includes a tantalizing shot of a Davis-cicle inside the compromised Fortress of Solitude. [OSCK]

Pushing Daisies:

No clue when the last episodes will air, but when the show's run ends prematurely, you'll have learned the answer to one long-term mystery, which should be a big relief for Mr. Emerson Cod. Also, Olive Snook sings a Bangles song. [TV Guide]

And here's the summary for episode 2x10, "The Norwegians":

Chuck's Aunt Vivian tries to hire Emerson to find her missing boyfriend Dwight and when he declines, she hires a group of three Norwegian private detectives. The Norwegians and Emerson and Ned have a long history of rivalry. Emerson later spies on the group of three and sees Olive seeming to be in cahoots with them. Olive and the Norwegians find a note written in Chuck's Aunt Lily's handwriting implicating her in the disappearance as well.

[SpoilerTV]

Eleventh Hour:

This mad-science investigation show chugs along. There's a casting call for episode 13, "Minimata." Local people in Flint Michigan get sick and go blind, possibly due to mercury poisoning. One helicopter newscaster gets poisoned and crashes his chopper during a broadcast. And then the newscaster's wife also goes blind and then finds out she's pregnant. Meanwhile, there's a dairy farmer who's covering up the deaths of several cows. (Does every episode of this show feature an evil farmer?) And there's an antique junk dealer. [SpoilerTV]