Never Go Through A Tunnel

It seems like a quick and easy way out, but dark and scary passageways usually house bad things that you don't want to bother with in the middle of fleeing for your life. It's simple: tunnels=death, for at least one person in the group. This is a tried and true fact of apocalyptic movies. Take for example the idiot drivers who decided to take the tunnel in Independence Day, toasted via fire ball (except for the ones who had that dog, but more on that later). Also who could forget the night vision moments in Cloverfield walking through New York's subway system. Avoid tunnels at all costs.

Do Not Join A Theme Gang

With the world ending, there will be many sad sacks who will try and recreate a Mad Max road warrior gang. Resist the urge to join anything theme-oriented. Basic rule of thumb: if you look like an idiot with a face tattoo or a fool running around in Medieval garb, you're going to get the sharp end of the death stick. Doomsday spelled this out pretty clearly: everyone who looked ridiculous got a ridiculous ending. Motorcycle gangs count too, don't forget even Romero's Dawn of the Dead leather riders got their just rewards for their hideous outfits and bad attitudes. Stick to the rag-tag refugee look, or lone wolf army motif. If you have to join a gang, stay in the back and never do anything you might later regret — like eat people.

Do Not Go Back For Loved Ones

If the world is ending, you may feel the need to find love ones that are in Princeton, a New York Library or a high rise apartment. This is a bad idea. Let go of your emotions and assume that everyone else in the world is dead, or trying to steal your food supplies. Going after loved ones almost always means your own death or the death of someone in the group. Look at it this way, it your loved one has survived and you meet up with them, bonus for you. But most likely they died from the plague, zombies, earthquake flood or whatever.

Never Be The First

I can't believe this even has to be said but no, do not go exploring in rooms, attic, caves, hallways or apartments where you are the first one in the door. My favorite character from Resident Evil Extinction, L.J., got bit by a zombie lady because he was checking out all the rooms to make sure it was safe. Let someone else do this, get a job as a medic or cook. There is no need for you to be first to go anywhere — let someone else do the exploring. If they find something really good, you can kill them and take it anyway.

Bring Your Pet

If you don't have a pet, I suggest you go to the pet store and steal one, looter style, or take care of your dead neighbors'. You may need this pet to help you keep your sanity or sacrifice its life for you, like in I Am Legend. Either way, animals are good luck when the chips are down for humans. You never know when a pair of love birds will come in handy to calm down a flock of murderous seagulls and crows. The same rule sometimes applies to children, but you will have to feed them considerably more.

Ditch The Biggest Guy In Your Group

They will turn into a zombie or rage machine, it's proven. Kill them before they kill you, or just ditch them at the next pass.

Don't Trust People In Uniform Unless They Have Defected From The System

Never trust the government, especially when the world is ending. It's a terrible idea, they would rather nuke the whole place than deal with people. If you see the military, run the other way or hide. Do not do what they say. The friendly people of Hollywood followed the advice of the government from Right At Your Door, and what happened to them? Same with the people of Raccoon City, from Resident Evil Apocalypse. Granted an ex-military person hell-bent on sticking it to the man can be a wonderful asset during the end of the world, just be sure to know the difference between the two.

Don't Barricade Yourself In

It always seems like a good idea, but 9 times out of 10 whatever you're trying to keep out gets in and now you're trapped. Think of the mess it caused for the cute little family in the beginning of28 Weeks Later and Shaun of the Dead. I say build a sky city in the trees.

Finally if all else fails, find the closest fridge, step in, and pray for a miracle.

Is the rest of the world more ready for depressing ecological dystopias that fail to scare or thrill than the US? That would appear to be the message from this weekend's international movie box office results, where - unlike in the United States - M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening outgrossed rival The Incredible Hulk. But, just like Public Enemy once said, don't believe the hype. There's more to this clash of titans than meets the eye.

While it's true that The Happening made $32.1 million to Hulk's $31 million, Marvel's less-than-jolly green giant actually played in less theaters across the world and in each of those theaters, outperformed Shyamalan's dour eco-drama (The actual numbers: Happening played in 5714 theaters across 88 international markets, while Hulk was shown in 3165 theaters across 38 markets). In countries where both movies opened on the same day, Ed Norton's love letter to Bill Bixby outshone 91 minutes of Mark Wahlberg Vs. Trees on a fairly impressive level:

"The Happening" topped $1 million in 10 markets and scored first places in France with $4.7 million, in Spain with $3.8 million and in Italy with $1.9 million — with no competition from "The Incredible Hulk." It finished third in the U.K. with $3.4 million as "Hulk" easily won with $6.3 million and the third frame of "Sex and the City" took in $3.7 million.

"Hulk" generated socko Mexican biz, with $4.6 million, 86% higher than "The Happening," and Universal's biggest launch ever for that territory. The superhero pic also scored in the booming Russian market with $3.7 million, including U's biggest opening day ever on Thursday.

Universal noted "The Incredible Hulk" had easily outperformed 2003's "Hulk" in markets including South Korea, where it took $3.3 million, 88% up on its predecessor. "Hulk" grossed $113 million overseas by the end of its run. "Incredible Hulk" expands next weekend into Italy and Spain and won't face another superhero pic until Sony opens "Hancock" in early July.

The moral of this story for studio bosses? Perhaps it's "Rushing out your spooky-ooky movies worldwide before the big summer movies get released is a good idea," or maybe it's just "South Koreans apparently really, really wanted to see that new Hulk movie." Nonetheless, look at the combined grosses for the two movies and just imagine how big a movie version of Hulk vs. The Rain would be.

Happening beats Hulk overseas [Variety]

In its second weekend, Batman Begins only lost about 44 percent of its box office take, compared with a 63 percent drop-off for Batman And Robin. (And Superman Returns had a 58.5 percent drop-off.) So a lot depends, for the Hulk, on word-of-mouth and reviews. Can the Hulk crush Maxwell Smart this weekend? Few reviewers seem to be saying the Hulk is as great as Batman Begins, and it's possible most of the die-hard fans have seen TIH already. My guess is Hulk will end up doing almost as well as Superman Returns, which is nothing to sneeze at.

The other big surprise success of the weekend was M. Night Shyamalan's much-maligned The Happening, which scored $30.3 million, better than Unbreakable and Lady In The Water. The film will probably make back its $50 million budget, but its success may just hasten the slow death of Shyamalan's career, if the people who saw it decide never to brave one of his movies again. [Box Office Prophets and Box Office Mojo]

Avowed Christian Shyamalan told us that The Happening is really about religious faith, and explained that he chose Mark Wahlberg to play science teacher Elliot Moore because of the actor's intense belief in Jesus. Maybe he also chose vacant-eyed Zooey Deschanel to play his wife Alma because she looks like a little girl who needs a big strong monotheist in her life? No comment on that one from Shyamalan.

We get tipped off to the fact that this allegedly science fictional movie is really an ID tent revival in the opening scenes where Elliot teaches his science students about evolution. He explains to them that honeybees are disappearing all over the country, and asks what some possible explanations might be. Students who say things like "climate change" and "evolution" are dismissed as being "partly right." But then when a generally quiet student finally says, "It's an act of nature that we can't understand," Elliot lights up and says that's the best answer. That phrase "act of nature," which sounds suspiciously like "act of God," crops up in the movie again and again to explain why plants have suddenly decided to kill humans.

Remember, ID substitutes God for nature in its theory of evolution — ID believers think evolution happened, but that it was guided by (a Judeo-Christian) God. So an "unexplained act of nature" is pretty much the same thing as saying an "act of God" in ID-speak.

Once people in New York City start killing themselves in random, gory ways, Elliot flees with his wife Alma and his math teacher pal Julian, as well as Julian's daughter Jess. In the film's other major Christian-influenced subplot, we discover that Alma and Elliot have "been fighting" — not only does Alma have the gal to insist that they "wait to have children," but she also went out to dessert with a male colleague without telling Elliot. What? Dessert and lack of babies makes her evil? Apparently so. Julian hisses to Elliot that Alma basically isn't good wife material and that he doesn't trust her. One of the major plot points in the film is whether Alma can somehow be redeemed through her tribulations. And by redeemed, of course, I mean: Will she learn her proper place in her relationship with Elliot?

As our little band of characters flee into the Pennsylvania countryside, they gradually begin to realize that the waves of suicides might be caused by plants. We see news commentators talking about how the "attacks" probably aren't coming from terrorists. And Elliot uses the "scientific method" to deduce that plants can "spontaneously evolve" in response to a threat. Maybe plants think humans are threats, and "spontaneously evolved" in an "act of nature" to manufacture a toxin that switches off humans' self-preservation instincts? Why, we'd all just instantly commit suicide! You know, because God — erm, I mean nature — is mad at us! For doing things like not polluting and not having babies with our husbands.

Trying to look wise but merely looking blank and addled, Elliot ponders and looks into the middle distance, intoning, "Science will come up with a reason to put in the books but int eh end it's just a theory. We fail to acknowledge forces at work beyond our understanding." Well put, Mr. Science Teacher. All those atheists with that whole "evolutionary theory" thing don't realize it's just a theory! Probably everything in nature is just beyond our understanding. Let's pray.

But back to "science." Once Elliot has discovered that plants are causing the suicides, he surmises that plants only attack humans in groups. So he and Alma head off into the deepest, unpopulated countryside with three kids from a group of refugees (Julian has gone with another group to Princeton to find his wife, leaving daughter Jess with Elliot). God makes another intervention at this point.

When the group comes up on a boarded up house, they beg its occupants to let them in. Elliot, Alma, and Jess are polite, but the two boys with them aren't. They kick the doors, calling the people inside "pussies" and "bitches." So the guys inside shoot them, in randomly gory detail. Let this be a lesson to you kids: Don't curse, or you'll be killed by rednecks with guns if the plants don't get you first.

Despite all this absurdity, you've got to admire Shyamalan's amazing ability to whip out a perfectly-constructed horror/scifi plot without actually ever having any kind of monster or coherent threat. We get all the classic "scary monster" moments in this movie — people staring at stuff with horrified looks on their faces, distant screams, long tension-mounting shots in creepy houses — and yet at the moment when we expect to look into the face of The Big Bad there's literally nothing. No Cloverfield with its throbbing, toothy face, no disfigured bad guy with a bag of poison. Just beautiful fields of trees and grasses moving gently in the breeze.

There's a kind of true brilliance to The Happening at these moments. It's as if Shyamalan, a smart guy if nothing else, is trying to show us that at the heart of every monster movie there really lurks nothing at all. Just an empty field that you can fill with whatever terrifies you most.

And yet a meditation on cinematic form and the construction of horror movies isn't exactly what The Happening wants to leave us with. Instead, we are forced to watch in where's-our-twist-ending boredom as the "happening" ends abruptly — at the exact moment when Alma realizes she really does want to be a proper wife to Elliot, and to be a mother to the now-orphaned Jess. As some TV talking heads explain later, "events like this can just end suddenly." And we're left with an image of Elliot, Alma and Jess embracing in a de-monstered field of plants, in the middle of an Eastern seaboard which has almost completely suicided itself.

I guess that's why three months later, in an even more nauseating coda, Jess is happily skipping off to school. Private schools in NYC are easy to get into at last, since all the kids are dead. Luckily, however, Alma is ready to help repopulate: She dances out the door to meet Elliot coming home from work, bubbling over with the good news that she's pregnant. Praise Jesus! At last, Alma is doing what "nature" and "evolution" want her to do.

Incredible Hulk:

Some new clips from Incredible Hulk went up at IGN, and here they are — including a fair bit of new footage. [IGN]

Transformers 2:

Is Optimus Prime in mourning? Apparently the Transformers 2 shooting just included a scene at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Fairmount Park, PA, where Optimus himself was hanging out. [Seibertron]

The Dark Knight:

Here's a new The Dark Knight TV spot, which reveals that some kids are annoying in the film. And the Joker makes a weird "Hmm" noise.

The Happening:

Here's a spoilery review of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening. Bits of new information include the fact that the mass suicides start in New York's Central Park. And then a ton of construction workers jump off a high-rise. And the convoluted scientific explanation for what's going on starts emerging pretty early in the movie, mostly through long speeches by Marky Mark and an eccentric nursery owner. Marky Mark and friends stay on the run, trying to avoid the wave of suicides — and at one point, they're in a field trying to outrun the wind, and things get silly. [Fangoria]

And there are some new clips from The Happening at this link. [MovieWeb]

Hancock:

A new TV spot for Will Smith's Hancock highlights the part of the movie that makes me uneasy: the whole god-who-can't-go-near-Charlize-Theron subplot. Hancock is becoming mortal! [Worst Previews]

Star Wars: Clone Wars:

Some new Star Wars: Clone Wars desktop patterns show a new look at Obi-Wan, Ahsoka and Anakin. Plus, cute.

Doctor Who:

Here's a sneak peek from Saturday's new Doctor Who episode, the first to be written by showrunner Russell T. Davies since the series premiere. [Spoiler TV]

Lost:

I don't know if you care what Lost star Jorge Garcia thinks is going to happen next, but it sounds pretty great to me. Garcia predicts his character Hurley will have lots of buddy-comedy road-trip adventures with Sayid, who picked him up from the sanitarium in the season finale. (I would totally watch that.) And Garcia thinks the show will end with a fight over the island between different groups that lay claim to it. [E! Online]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Here's the first pic of Garbage singer Shirley Manson on the set of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where she plays a software mogul. [Legion Of Geek]

Smallville:

Lois will only appear in 13 episodes — give or take a couple — of Smallville season eight. [TV Guide]

Chuck:

The episode ominously titled "Chuck Vs. The Breakup" will introduce a new agent named Juliette, who's 27 years old and looks ethereal, like one of the elves from Lord Of The Rings. But she's all business. The episode also features the leader of a Columbian cartel and Hans, a scary Nordic man. [TV Squad]

Spectacular Spider-Man:

Spider-Man fights Venom at last in the Spectacular Spider-Man finale. Here are some pics! Am I on crack, or does the middle one look sort of Miyazawa-esque?

The Happening director M. Night Shyamalan sat down with the press to talk about the science behind his latest flick — and the science is a weird mixture of Jesus and algae at the bottom of the sea. Night was inspired by reading Albert Einstein's biography and discovering Einstein had rejected religion at first, until eventually he saw "the hand of God" in the gaps between scientific explanations. In The Happening, Shyamalan tries to recreate this surrender to faith by saying, sometimes you just can't explain it when shit happens. Click through to discover the deeper religious message of The Happening — and to find out where that algae comes into it. (With spoilers.)

In The Happening, people start killing themselves for no reason, and according to early reports it turns out that the plants are secreting a neurotoxin that makes people crazily suicidal. Shyamalan said he got the idea from reading about undersea algae that can secrete a toxin to protect itself.

But asked what specific religious faith inspired The Happening, Shyamalan went super vague. He said he drew on "the Native American culture and relationship with nature, the relationship with the sky, the earth, the rock the bear." He also claimed that cast he Mark Wahlberg because of his strong faith in Jesus. But Wahlberg's religious faith ended up causing a ton of reshoots. Whenever Shyamalan would ask Wahlberg what he was thinking about, and Wahlberg replied, "Jesus," Shyamalan would make him reshoot the scene in question. (Until he was no longer thinking about Jesus?)

Added Shyamalan, "There are limits to rational thought." Which is actually the only sentence I feel clearly explained his faith message. But maybe I'm just an overly rational person waiting for God to be explained — or rather not explained — to me because, as Shyamalan says,

It's not cynical, but clinical minds are the ones that it needs to be proved to the most. The ability to believe is right there. It actually means more to them, it's such an important moment. We all want one day someone to go, "Here's the answer. There is something bigger going on."

At least, that's what the New York Post is claiming, and we all know how accurate they are when it comes to news. The Post - populist above all other things - has been looking at the advance tracking numbers for Marvel's big green guy. Shyamalan's movie - which looks at an alternative type of destructive green power - isn't faring so well ahead of its release:

Starring Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, The Happening has virtually no buzz with just 2 percent Un-Aided Awareness, and the movie, which may be Shyamalan's take on global warming, has only 54 percent Awareness. It trails Incredible Hulk in Definite Interest with a mere 30 percent, and The Happening has only a 4 percent First Choice score 18 days out. The bottom line may be that moviegoers do not trust the Indian-born auteur after a less-than-satisfying twist in his 2004 movie The Village and the disastrous Lady in the Water. It is a very safe bet that Incredible Hulk will easily win the June 13 weekend, and Shyamalan will need positive word-of-mouth to parlay The Happening into a modest hit.

Meanwhile, the Post has also been tracking how the Hulk stacks up to Marvel's other summer superhero. They've found out that the general public apparently prefers Robert Downey Jr. to Norton when it comes to goatee-d saviors of the day:

Eighteen days prior to its May 2 release, Iron Man was at 13 percent Un-Aided Awareness compared to 8 percent for the new Incredible Hulk (Un-Aided Awareness is an excellent measure of buzz and anticipation). Not surprisingly, Leterrier's tent-pole picture is already at 91 percent Total Awareness, but its Definite Interest score trails Iron Man 51 percent-35 percent. I am told that Incredible Hulk is at 9 percent in Overall First Choice while Iron Man was at 19 percent, and the big green guy has about half of Iron Man's First Choice number with males (30 percent-14 percent). The two strongest demos for Incredible Hulk are 12-16's and 25-34's. The only category that Incredible Hulk scores better is in First Choice with African Americans 18 percent-16 percent.

Hulk to Stomp Shyamalan's Happening [New York Post]

G.I. Joe:

Here are a couple of set pics of Sienna Miller as the Baroness from the filming of G.I. Joe. Note the blood, the huge-ass gun, and the weird personal explosive device. [WENN, via IESB]

Transformers 2:

Apparently for the filming of Transformers 2, they've transformed a Pennsylvania steel mill into a Chinese industrial city, with Blackhawk helicopters and a new concept car and stuff. Here's an early photo. (The top of the building says "Entrance/Exit," which doesn't really make sense as the name of a factory, but okay.) [Transformers Live, via IESB]

The Happening:

Here's a new plot synopsis for M. Night Shyamalan's next movie, The Happening:

It begins with no clear warning. It seems to come out of nowhere. In a matter of minutes, episodes of strange, chilling deaths that defy reason and boggle the mind in their shocking destructiveness, erupt in major American cities. What is causing this sudden, total breakdown of human behavior? Is it some kind of new terrorist attack, an experiment gone wrong, a diabolical toxic weapon, an out-of-control virus? Is it being transmitted by air, by water...how?

[For] Philadelphia high school science teacher Elliot Moore what matters most is finding a way to escape the mysterious and deadly phenomenon. Though he and his wife Alma are in the midst of a marital crisis, they hit the road, first by train, then by car, with Elliot's math teacher friend Julian and his 8 year-old daughter Jess, heading for the Pennsylvania farmlands where they hope they'll be out of reach of the grisly, ever-growing attacks. Yet it soon becomes clear that no one - and nowhere - is safe. This terrifying, invisible killer cannot be outrun. It is only when Elliot begins to discover the true nature of what is lurking out there - and just what has unleashed this force that threatens the future of humanity — that he discovers a sliver of hope that his fragile family might be able to escape what is happening.

Fringe:

Here's a second trailer for J.J. Abrams' FBI/mad science show Fringe, which shows more of that horrible airplane disaster (not to be confused with the pilot for Abrams' Lost.) [01-18-08]

And here's another sneak peek, showing a pretty non-descript rooftop chase:

Lost:

In this week's Lost finale, there will be more casualties. And the island castaways will face one obstacle after another in their quest to get off the island, so it seems like a miracle when the Oceanic Six finally do escape. [Spoilers Lost]

And here's a British trailer for the two-hour finale, which shows some new footage. [Spoiler Geeks]

Doctor Who:

There's a rumor that archeologist River Song (Alex Kingston) in Doctor Who's upcoming library two-parter is actually a Time Lord with ties to the Doctor. So one fan speculates that she could be Romana, the Doctor's long-lost Time Lord companion? [Romanafen]

Another weird rumor about RIver Song: She's someone who's gotten to know a future version of the Doctor very well — so she's from his future, and he's from her past. And she tells him that in the future, they'll get married. [AutumnRae63]

Giant Size Astonishing X-Men:

The final issue of Joss Whedon's X-Men comic comes out next week, and it includes the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. We wrap up Whedon's "Breakworld" plot, and the metal-skinned Colossus has to make a major decision about the barbarian world's fate. [IGN]

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed:

Here's a summary of the novelization of the forthcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game, which gives a few more hints as to the game's storyline:

Set in the dark times between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, this stand-alone novel delves deeper into Darth Vader's history, revealing the origins of his secret Apprentice and Vader's ultimate plans for him.

Trained from childhood by Vader himself, the Apprentice is ready for the final test: he must hunt down and destroy the last of Vader's old enemies-the Jedi. Aided by Imperial pilot Juno Eclipse and the droid PROXY, the Apprentice has no qualms obeying his master's commands-until he has a fateful epiphany that will change everything he knows about who he is...and what he is meant to accomplish.

Shedding new light on events in the Star Wars universe, this exciting novel will rev you up for the action-packed video game!

Wow, so many terrifying images here. A tree full of hanging people, a man lying down in front of a lawnmower and another woman stabbing herself in the neck with a hair-pin. But the award for most dramatic and painful way to kill someone goes to the man who walks into a lion's cage. The guy is still standing, yikes. I'm most concerned with John Leguizamo sitting on the concrete all bloody. This frightens me because he's the father of a little kid in the movie. I hope there's a kitchen towel nearby so they can wrap up whatever is wrong and it'll be magically healed. Kitchen towels cure everything in the movies.

The Happening:

Another bad early review of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening has gone up online. It's "The Birds without any birds." A neuro-toxin is released without any warning around the Northeastern U.S., and it causes people to murder themselves in terrible ways. Early on, we see a cellphone video of a guy walking into a lion cage without any awareness of what he's doing. And a row of people shoot themselves, and when each person drops the gun, the next person picks it up and uses it.

Mark Wahlberg is a passive-aggressive high-school teacher who's on the outs with his wife, Zooey Deschanel. They flee together, along with a few other people (plus the daughter of a fellow teacher) and they try to figure out what's happened. There are some War Of The Worlds-style fleeing sequences, including a barn with a trigger-happy farmer. And then it turns out the plants are releasing the neuro-toxin to get rid of the pesky humanity. Shyamalan attempts to "cut to a menacing-looking tree." And then they find a nice old lady whose house was built for hiding slaves — which turns out to come in handy. And instead of the trademark Shyamalan twist ending, the film has no ending at all. It just stops. Oh, and here are some images I don't think we've shown before. [Collider]

Fringe:

Here's the first promotional still from Fringe, J.J. Abrams' show that's really not an X-Files rip off. This must be from the scene where Anna Torv puts on a bikini to go inside the mind of her comatose boyfriend John. [New York Times]

Smallville:

On tonight's Smallville, Lex tells Clark he loved him (like a brother). And then they have their big showdown, and a buttload of stuff falls on top of Lex. The show ends with a big cliffhanger: is Lex alive or dead? [Serrico]

Stargate: Atlantis:

In season five of Stargate: Atlantis, Teyla keeps the baby. [Friendshipper]

Doctor Who:

Here's a snippet from the script for Saturday's Doctor Who episode featuring Agatha Christie:
ROGER: Miss Christie, I've a question. Why a Belgian detective?
AGATHA: The Belgians make such lovely buns
REVEREND GOLIGHTLY: Where do you get your ideas from?
AGATHA: Murder is easy, vicar, when you've killed as many people as I have.
And a clip. It's not really a spoiler to reveal that the Doctor and Donna will have to explain they're not married at this point, is it? [Planet Gallifrey]

Chuck:

Chuck's producers are looking for a major star to play a retired secret agent who gets called out of retirement to tutor Chuck. [Chuck TV]

Heroes:

Here's a first look at Daphne, the speedster who confounds Hiro in the new season of Heroes. [Heroes TV Show Spoilers]

Lost:

Here are some more sneak peeks at tonight's episode, including Michelle Forbes:

Kyle XY:

In the Kyle XY third season premiere, Kyle will meet face to face with the scientists of Latnok at last. He'll mostly interact with one of them, Daniel Cassidy. Kyle insists he'll never work for Latnok, but Cassidy is sure Kyle will eventually come back to the people who created him. [TV Squad]

The Happening:

The secret of The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan's newest movie, is that it's a virus produced by plants and trees to fight back against humanity. It spreads through the air and makes people kill themselves. And the main characters, a family fleeing from the disaster, finally kill themselves at the movie's end. [Edward J.R.]

Smallville:

Someone claims to have casting sides for two new characters who will appear in Smallville season eight. There's a twentysomething bartender at Ace Of Clubs named Davis Bloome, who meets Lois when he serves her whiskey, and seems to read her mind as she's musing about a friend. It's a "weirdly sexy" moment. They snark back and forth, but then the conversation gets too weird for Lois. In a second audition scene, Lois seems to know Davis much better, and she finds him with blood on his hands. He says a waitress broke a tray of glasses and cut herself, but Lois doesn't believe him. And then it turns out Davis has blackouts where he can't remember anything he did. Lois offers to help, but Davis just begs her not to tell anyone. And she suddenly feels afraid.

The second character is Tess, who meets Clark in his barn, where she's wearing a pencil skirt and high heels. She tells Clark she's moving into Luthor Manor in Lex's absence. And she baits Clark about the fact that he was the last one to see Lex alive, and asks why Lionel Luthor would take a farmboy under his wing. Clark says Lionel was just a family friend, but Tess thinks Lionel lusted after Martha Kent. And her second scene involves Jimmy sneaking into the Daily Planet archives. Tess has been looking for Jimmy, but he's a hard guy to find. Jimmy tells Tess he didn't work for Lex, but she knows better. She tells him to spill what he knows about Lex's last trip... or else.

So... Lex is being replaced by a woman. And Lois is getting a new creepy love interest. [Notes... Written On Water]

Battlestar Galactica:

Battlestar Galactica just recently filmed a scene that started to explain how Starbuck came back from the dead. And "it's not an uplifting understanding," says star Edward James Olmos. "It's as dark as everything else. You sit there and you go, 'You guys are sick!'" [Boston Globe]

Doctor Who:

Once again, Digital Spy has a bunch of spoilers for Saturday's Doctor Who episode, three of which are fake. Off the top of my head, I can believe Donna tries to fit in with the 1920s by saying "spiffing" and "chin chin," Agatha Christie hits on Donna to no avail, Chief Inspector Smith shows up, and Donna thinks that Enid Blyton's "Noddy" is real and that "Murder On The Orient Express" is a song. [Doctor Who Insania]

Lost:

Time travel is definitely happening on Lost, say producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. And you shouldn't be asking if Claire is dead, but rather "What happened to Claire?" And we should be asking, "What is dead?" (Whoah.) Richard Alpert will be more prominent in the future of the show. Some of the show's mysteries, like the numbers, will never be explained, for fear of cheapening them the way the Force was cheapened on Star Wars after we learned about midichlorians. By the season's end, you'll have a sense of where the Penny-Desmond storyline is going. [E! Online]

Someone who's on set says the last week of filming includes scenes in the jungle, in a church, in a rescue plane and on the studio lot. And the "extra babies" (doubles for Aaron?) are girls. Significant? Or just random? [Lyly Ford]

Stargate: Atlantis:

Stargate: Atlantis will have a big two-parter halfway through its fifth season: "First Contact" and "The Lost Tribe." Dr. Daniel Jackson (from Stargate: SG-1) will visit Atlantis to do research on Janus, the scientist who invented a time-traveling puddle jumper, and who also saved Dr. Weir when she traveled back in time 10,000 years. Daniel and Rodney McKay discover a research laboratory on another planet, which belonged to Janus. But the other Atlanteans did not look favorably upon Janus' work. And Jackson and McKay aren't alone there.

Meanwhile, "Todd" the Wraith seizes control over the Earth battlecruiser Apollo, and only Ronon and Keller remain at large. Todd threatens to start killing people unless Ronon and Keller turn themselves in. Todd is heading to Janus' laboratory, to shut down the "Attero device," which threatens his new alliance. But Col. John Sheppard and Dr. Zelenka have joined up with a Traveler ship led by a captain named Katana, and they're are rushing to get to Janus' lab first. Sheppard and Zelenka work with a 15-year-old engineer, Mila to upgrade the Traveler ship's engines, because if they don't make it to Janus' lab before Todd, Jackson and McKay may be dead. [Gateworld, via Leliana McKay]

Firefly:

An upcoming Firefly comic book series, The Shepherd's Tale, will detail more about the mysterious pastor, Shepherd Book. According to actor Ron Glass, we'll learn that Book found God in a soup bowl, something about Book is artificial, Book's greatest victory was his worst defeat, and Book took the name of someone he killed. [Firefly Fans]

Star Wars: Legacy Of The Force:

More spoilers for Star Wars: Invincible, the Legacy Of The Force book that comes out on Tuesday: Jaina kills Jacen, after injuring him severely. Jacen has gone totally batshit, but really is trying to save Tenel Ka and Allana from some sort of danger. But Jaina doesn't believe him. Daala becomes chief of state. And Luke Skywalker is "around" but doesn't do much. His son, Ben, fights Tahiri and captures her. [Jacen's Heart]

Indiana Jones:

Here are some new pictures from Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull — including a lot of detail of an elaborate temple-like set. [Slashfilm and TrekMovie]

The Happening:

And here are three new stills from M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening. [TrekMovie again]

Heroes:

Heroes vol. 3, "Villains," will take up only the first 13 episodes of the 25-episode third season. And the good guys will save the world at least twice next season, which will have a much faster pace than the sluggish season two. Actor Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder Suresh) is "thrilled" with what's in store for his character next season. Also, we'll learn what Mama Petrelli's power is, and she'll play a super-important role in the season. And we'll learn more about "the evolution of powers." [HeroesTelevision]

Lost:

In the eleventh episode of the current Lost season, Locke finds out where Jacob's cabin is, while life on the freighter becomes dangerous. And in this Thursday's episode, we'll learn something about the smoke monster. We'll know who shot Karl and Rousseau. (But we haven't seen the last of Rousseau.) And we'll find out why Mrs. Hawking was with "that monk." And in this episode, a few minor characters die in the first 15 minutes — and then a major character is shot in the head, execution-style, later on. And it's not who you think! And here are some new pics from this Thursday's, um, explosive episode. [Spoilers Lost]

Doctor Who:

In the upcoming Doctor Who two-parter featuring the Sontarans, the potato-headed clone warriors have a plot to choke the Earth to death. To make matters worse, the paramilitary organization U.N.I.T. has a traitor in its ranks. And the Doctor has to choose between Martha and Donna. (Choose Martha! Choose Martha!) Oh, and the second half's description asks whether the Doctor will be forced to "make the ultimate sacrifice." (Answer: probably not.) [SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

Here are some new spoilers for this Saturday's Smallville, courtesy of some cellphone-only clips. Jimmy tries to cook Chloe the "Wholesome Olsen" breakfast, but she's running late. So Jimmy whines about wanting to put the spark back in their relationship. Chloe says it'll just take a little time. And then in another scene, Vanessa has Chloe tied up and is roughing her up, asking about how Chloe accessed the power grid exactly when/where there were power surges. Jimmy sneaks up behind Vanessa as she starts tasering Chloe. [Operation Save Clark Kent]

And here's a new trailer showcasing the next few episodes — including Lex finding a certain cold stronghold:

Battlestar Galactica/Caprica:

The title of the Caprica pilot TV movie is "Revolution," and it's an allegory for the American Revolution, says Sci Fi Channel executive vice president Mark Stern. [Wired]

I had thought The Ruins was going to be a pure supernatural horror flick, since it takes place in the ruins of some kind of Mayan (?) tomb in Mexico. A bunch of touristas from the U.S. get led there by evil natives who won't let them out. Trailers show a bunch of nice white kids being eaten up by black squirmy things — seemed like just another lameass horror movie using angry ancestral spirits as a way to demonstrate how yucky it is to go to Mexico on Spring Break and get worms or the runs.

But apparently the flick, according to Bloody Disgusting, is about an angry plant that eats people. Way cooler than angry spirits. And it seems the plant has "evolved" into this vicious human-eating state, much the way Shyamalan's plants have evolved that suicide-inducing toxin in The Happening. Now I'm actually vaguely intrigued by the movie, since it's high time plant monsters made a comeback. We cannot live on Triffids and Biollante alone.

Review of The Ruins [Bloody Disgusting]

Note: You're really kind of voting for two things here. Which of these movies will be the biggest hit, and the most surprising hit? I wouldn't personally be that surprised if Incredible Hulk does well, but I'm including it because many commenters yesterday saw it as having weak buzz. Meanwhile, I would be stunned if Babylon A.D. played to more than a handful of confused Babylon 5 fans, despite the awesome presence of Vin Diesel and Michelle Yeoh.

So what's the biggest sleeper hit of 2008?

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Note: I left out some smaller movies and some films that we know will probably bomb, like Eddie Murphy's Starship Dave. I also left out M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, which seems likely to bomb, even though I don't want to diss the Wahlberg. I wanted to avoid including any movie that was such an obvious choice, it would get a landslide vote. Plus, I'm not sure either Starship Dave or The Happening is really intended to be a summer blockbuster, or if they're more like counter-programming hoping to score a niche audience.

Also, this seems to be as good a place as any to ask: Is Get Smart science fiction? Should we be covering it?

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We're still on the fence about this flick, but it looks marginally like Signs 2. Only this time the aliens are the plants that we've been sharing the planet with all these years. Looks like they finally got pissed off about all the pollution and the vegetarians. Watching this reminds us that Shyamalan's Unbreakable was a great movie that got slammed for being too slow and unexciting, but in retrospect is well worth a second (and third) viewing. However, Signs never stops us from asking why aliens would come to a world coated in something that is severely lethal to them. We hope The Happening doesn't have similar plotholes in it.

Apparently the Earth's plants begin rebelling against mankind, and start releasing neurotoxins that cause everyone to go wacky and turn into lemmings. So all of that animal love and peace and harmony that vegetarians have been preaching to us for years will come back to bite them on the ass. Marky Mark takes his family on the run, runs into Zooey Deschanel while avoiding suicidal drivers, and there's undoubtedly some big twist at the end, like plants are sentient and have been screaming at us to stop eating salad for years. We just haven't heard them.