New Buck Rogers Movie Directed By Frank Miller?

Buck RogersBuck Rogers is due for a resurrection. The character has been around since the 20s, and he’s gotten a redo every couple decades, but we haven’t seen anything from him since the early 80s and the television series with Gil Gerard and Erin Gray. It’s time for more Buck.

Well now it’s happening. IGN says that a new Buck Rogers movie is in the works. What’s more, Frank Miller, director of The Spirit and co-director of Sin City may be one of the names in contention to helm it.

For now it’s still too early to know if this will really get done, but it’s nice to know that somewhere out there, someone at least, is thinking of bring back Buck. Beedeebedeebeep!

Preview Clip From Battlestar Galactica - Faith

bsgBattlestar Galactica is in trouble. There, I’ve said it. This season has not been good. The show has become a weekly sermon, lost in naval gazing examinations of the meaning of god, faith, and meandering, preachy meditation on the importance of religion. I’m expecting a cameo by Jesus at any minute.

It’s not going to get any better either. This week’s episode is entitled “Faith”, which almost certainly means they’ll be laying the pompous religious stuff on even thicker. You’ll see what I mean, in the clip below. It’s a preview look at this week’s “Faith” episode. What the frack happened to the best show on television? I really hope they can turn this ship around.

Clip after the jump.
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars Animated Movie Poster

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I feel like every time I write about this movie I have to explain it. Yes, it’s Star Wars. No Ewan McGregor isn’t in it. It’s animated Star Wars. Yes it’s a movie. No not a made for TV movie. A real movie. Computer animated. You know, like The Incredibles.

Now this Star Wars movie, whatever it is has a poster. Maybe it’ll make it all a little clearer.

Battlestar Spin-off Caprica Finds Its Leads!

Paula MalcomsonThe Sci-Fi Channel’s upcoming BSG spin-off Caprica is filling out its cast. It’s a prequel, which means opportunities for the use of existing BSG castmembers are pratically nil. They’ll have to start from scratch, and they’re starting with an actress named Paula Malcomson.

Malcomson has been cast as the female lead in Caprica… and no she’s not playing a Viper pilot. Instead, she plays a surgeon named Amanda, who works as a “double agent” according to HR. Does that mean Cylon? Let the speculation begin!

Malcomson has been a long time television actor. Most recently she’s appeared on episodes of shows like Lost, E.R., and even Enterprise where she played Madeline Reed for one episode.
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New X-Files: I Want To Believe Poster

A new poster for the upcoming X-Files movie has popped up online over at Bad Taste. Yeah, the poster looks kind of fake, but I have it on good authority that thing is the real deal. It’s a Polish poster for the film, and apparently this sort of shoddy one sheet work is normal over there. Take a look:
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Starship Troopers 3 Release Date

starship troopers 2Sony has announced the arrival date for their Direct to DVD Starship Troopers sequel. Expect Starship Troopers 3: Marauder on store shelves July 29th. That’ll put it up against another major science fiction release: Stargate Continuum.

For this second DTV sequel Casper Van Dien returns as Johnny Rico. The plot, presumably, revolves around futuristic soldiers fighting alien bugs. I wonder if it bothers them to be called bugs?

What Starship Troopers really needs though isn’t Casper Van Dien. They need to invest in bringing back Neil Patrick Harris. If NPH can make Harold & Kumar good, just imagine what he could do returning to the world of Starship Troopers. What would NPH do? Make anything he’s in awesome. Also he’d kill bugs with his crazy mind bullets.

Reaper May Be Cancelled?

ray wise on reaperIt should be a given that Reaper will be back for another season on the CW network. After all, it’s not like there’s anything else on the network worthy of watching. If nothing else you’d think they’d be willing to keep the show going, simply because it’s the one thing on their network that has anyone talking. Sadly, in the world of television programming, logic does not always prevail.

The LA Times says that despite good reviews, Reaper may be on the bubble. On the bubble is TV executive code for “we’re looking for a good excuse to cancel it.” The CW blames their lack of enthusiasm for the show on lackluster ratings. However, perhaps someone should remind them that they are the CW, and all of their shows get lackluster ratings. Isn’t that kind of a giving? It’s on the friggin CW. Please, someone point me to a CW show that gets good ratings. No, re-runs of Seinfeld do not count.

Note to the CW: Reaper is literally the only thing you have going for you. Along with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it’s also one of the very best new shows we got last year.
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Stargate Atlantis Season 4 On DVD

stargate atlantisMGM Home Entertainment has announced the impending release of Stargate Atlantis season 4 on DVD. I’ve never quite understood the show’s popularity myself, but there’s no doubt that it’s beloved, presumably by people who have never seen Farscape.

The season 4 DVD drops on July 8th, which gives it a couple of weeks to monopolize the money of Stargate fans before the release of Stargate Continuum on Blu-Ray July 29th.

The Atlantis season 4 set will retail for $49.98 and include 20 episodes on 5 discs along with the usual assortment of extras. Expect commentary tracks, deleted scenes, photos, and even a blooper reel where presumably, Amanda Tapping will accidentally punch someone in the nuts. Isn’t that the way bloopers work?

Trailer For Vin Diesel’s Babylon A.D.

babylon a.d.Vin Diesel’s upcoming Sci Fi movie Babylon A.D. has its first trailer. In this case it is an international trailer which means, if the rumors are to be believed, that what’s in this trailer may bear absolutely no resemblance to the movie we see in the United States. Apparently the European version of the film will be a full 70 minutes longer.

Regardless, for now this is the only trailer we’ve got. Take a look, and find out what Vin Diesel will be up to in theaters this summer:
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Jonah Hill In Transformers 2

Jonah HillGranted, the only thing any of us really care about seeing in the next Transformers movie is more giant freakin robots, but there will be some humans in it too. Shia LaBeouf is coming back, and now EW says Jonah Hill is in talks to join the cast.

If you don’t know who Jonah Hill is, then I suggest you run out and rent (does anyone still rent movies?) these awesome, geektastic movies immediately: The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad. Or, just hop over to a theater and see Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He’s genius.

How that comedic genius will fit into Transformers 2 though, remains to be seen. Word is that he’ll be playing Sam Witwicky’s college roomate, which I guess could mean he’ll be sames new comic-relief sidekick. Except I thought the robots were Sam’s sidekick. Or maybe Sam’s their sidekick. I’m really not sure which.

Book Review: Timothy Zahn’s Allegiance

star wars allegianceIn 1992, with George Lucas’s Star Wars movies nine years out of the limelight, little known (yet Hugo Award winning) author Timothy Zahn single-handedly reignited the imagination of Jedi fandom and launched Lucas’s universe into an entirely new realm. He did it with the release of “Heir to the Empire”, a book set in the Star Wars universe and taking place after the events of Return of the Jedi. “Heir” was the first of three books, known as the Thrawn trilogy, and with them not only did Zahn keep the fires of Star Wars burning bright during the long years between the original films and the prequels, he launched an all new, multimedia empire of expanded universe novels and merchandise which has since ballooned into dozens and dozens of books and comics by various authors and made George Lucas even richer than rich.

More importantly though, the Thrawn Trilogy was good. Really good. Unlike most of the usual franchise gunk that’s published in paperback form, Zahn’s novels stood on their own as legitimate literary works. They had value beyond the world of easy-to-please fanboys. He didn’t just slap some lightsaber descriptions between two covers. Zahn revolutionized not only Star Wars, but genre series writing in general.

Unfortunately Zahn didn’t have the good sense to leave well enough alone. He followed up the Thrawn Trilogy in 1997 with a sequel called “Specter of the Past” and he’s since released four others, culminating in this latest entry, “Allegiance”. With each release the quality of Zahn’s work has degraded until now, “Allegiance” isn’t just bad it’s almost unreadable. What happened to the Zahn we used to know and love?
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Battlestar Galactica Video Clip - Escape Velocity

battlestar galactica clipWe’ve got a new clip from this week’s upcoming episode of Battlestar Galactica, “Escape Velocity”. If the ending to last week’s episode rocked your world the way it did mine, then you’re already on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens this week.

In this new clip from the shows upcoming episode, Baltar is back to playing his man of the people thing. Take a look:
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Is Hellboy Fighting Giant Freakin Robots?

We don’t normally cover a lot of superheroes here on GFR, even awesome, red, demonic ones. But here’s something that’s just too good to pass up. The plot of the next Hellboy movie, Hellboy II:The Golden Army has been kept pretty well under wraps, but a new poster released for the film at the New York Comic Con speaks volumes about what he’ll be up against in his new movie. Gone are the tentacles of the first film, and in their place… he’s fighting giant freakin robot bugs! Now that’s cool.

Behold the evidence:
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Sarah Connor Chronicles Gets A Second Season!

terminatorThey’ve kept fans twisting in the wind for months now, but it looks like Fox has finally made up its mind about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It’s coming back. They’ve decided to renew the show and give it a second season according to TV Guide.

About time too. The ratings were good, reviews were solid, why did it take them this long? Bring back Sarah Connor was a no brainer.

No word yet on exactly when that second season will start for The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but at least we know its happening. Psychotic killer robot fans rejoice.

Giant Freakin Update - Moore Gets More, Ghost In The Shell, Bad Fans, And More

With the addition of defecting former Cinema Blend writer Matt Norris to the team, we’ve done a lot better job over the past couple of weeks of well… catching everything that’s interesting. It helps too that we avoid all the superhero and straight up, completely non-sci-fi horror dreck here the clutters up so many sites. Yeah, it’s a traffic winner but it’s been covered more than adequately everywhere, usually at the expense of other, more legit sci-fi.

So while we love us some Batman, we’ll stay focused on the rest of the science fiction genre on GFR (with only an occasional superhero pit stop), and in this, your weekly Giant Freak Update. It’s your guide to all the cool stuff our wives wouldn’t let us get around to reporting for you throughout the week, probably because they wanted us to “spend time with them”. I know, I don’t get it either. I’m really not that interesting. Here we go:

Ron Moore Making A New Sci-Fi Trilogy For Film! - Battlestar Galactica creator and all around science fiction guru has been given a blank check to create his own science fiction trilogy for the movies. We don’t know what it’s about, but it’s Ron Moore, so it’s going to be good. Move over Lucas, here comes Ronald D. Moore.

Spielberg Makes Ghost In The Shell - Yeah, that Steven Spielberg. He’s producing a live action version of the classic Japanese Manga/Anime Ghost in the Shell.

Star Wars In WWII - Ever wanted what Star Wars characters would look like if they were thrust into World War II? Yeah, me either, but the folks at Toy Mania have done it anyway. See Han Solo, WWII bomber pilot here.

Bad Fandom: Worn Out By Whedonites - Let’s face it, no matter how much most of us may love Serenity, we all know those Joss Whedon fans are a little nuts. Stuart over at CB had the balls to call him out on it. As anyone who knows a Whedonite would probably expect… they responded by trying to proselytize Buff. Worth a read, check it out here.

Trek Remastered Rescheduled - If you’re wondering why we didn’t have another one of those cool Star Trek: Remastered teaser images from Michael Okuda this week, it’s because the next episode has been rescheduled. The newest one, “Mudd’s Women” was supposed to air this weekend, but has been rescheduled to next weekend instead.