• Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
The 2008 Saturn Awards were handed out this Tuesday night. The Saturns are where you turn for the awarding of genre movies and television, the stuff usually overlooked by Oscar or the Emmys in favor of boring dramas starring Keira Knightley. I can’t blame them, Keira Knightley is an attention getter.
This year the Saturn’s selected Cloverfield as the year’s best Science Fiction movie. I’d have gone I Am Legend, but at least that film got a little love with a win for Will Smith as best Actor. Here’s the complete list of this years Saturn Award winners:
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Category: film, television
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I'm writing this story from the bedside of my wife after she gave birth to Audrey Kate last night at 11:06pm. In fact, she's cradled in my arms as I type this. Having 3 girls under the age of 9 got me to thinking. How do you raise them right? No, I'm not talking about saying no to drugs or keeping their virginity until they are 40. I'm talking about how to raise them on the right movies; specifically, sci-fi movies. Over the next few weeks, I'll be working on my latest story entitled "Must See Sci Fi! The Top 25 of the Past 25 Years." The 25 years rule disqualifies many movies such as Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Planet of the Apes, Metropolis, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I'm going to scour the past 25 years and list the must see science fiction classics since 1983 so that my three girls can understand and appreciate the great sci fi hits I have enjoyed over the past couple of decades.
At first glance, WALL-E is a complicated science fiction tale, set against a grand post-apocalyptic backdrop. But it's an illusion. More than any other recent film by the geniuses at Pixar it’s a kids’ movie, maybe their most simplistic and accessible yet. If WALL-E were a book, it’d be in the children’s department emblazoned with a title like “My First Science Fiction Story” and there would probably be a page for coloring somewhere before the back cover. They’ve taken a fairly ambitious sci fi concept and made it the perfect window for kids into a broader world of imagination and perhaps even activism. Does it have some appeal for adults? Sure. It’s still smart sci fi, just told in the most straightforward, easy to understand way possible. They’re happy to have you in the theater, but mostly they want your 8-year-old son or daughter. So maybe for adults there aren’t a lot of surprises, but that doesn’t mean you won’t revel in the Pixar-perfect execution of another story well told.
Disney's WALL-E is going retro with some really incredible, 50s style poster artwork created specially for the film. The four incredibly cool posters below are available for sale over on 
George Carlin, known primarily for his stand-up routine about the 7 words you can't say on television, has died at age 71. Preliminary reports say he died of heart failure at 5:55 Sunday evening. Carlin was a counter-culture god, famous for championing free speech in his comedy routine. He also starred in numerous movies but GFR will always hold his role in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure close to heart. Carlin knew what he was talking about. 
If you honestly thought a site called Giant Freakin Robots would discriminate against a little robot, you are dead wrong mister. We here at GFR embrace all freakin robots regardless of stature (although giant is usually cooler). With Wall-E, you have one of the most dynamic robots to hit the screen. He's a little small but he has personality. Personality goes along way.
This story title doesn't even make sense does it? How can some craptacular movie like Speed Racer even begin to affect the amount of Wall-E Toys? At last week's Licensing International Expo, Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney Consumer Products, discussed how stores had to make a choice on what to stock and they mostly gambled on Speed Racer. I sometimes question the intelligence of idiot execs at Wal-Mart, Target, and the like. Who in their damn right mind would have thought Speed Racer would be a success? It looked like blue screen shit from the get go. These short sighted middle managers actually made the decision based on another Disney-Pixar film, Cars. While mediocre compared to other Pixar films, Cars has raked in the merchandising dough to a ridiculous amount. The merchandising bonanza is also the sole reason Cars 2 is in production before we get a sequel to The Incredibles if we ever do! 
Two videos have leaked out onto the internet from the set of the upcoming live-action Dragonball movie. It's pretty blurry stuff, but if you squint you can make out a few shapes pulling off some wild martial arts moves. It's not much, but for now it's all we've got! Take a look:
We've uncovered three, rather cool, videos from JJ Abrams' upcoming TV series Fringe. It debuts this fall, and from what we've seen of it the show looks like a more science based version of The X-Files. Apparently the first episode starts with a plane crash. We know Abrams' has a gift for those. Take a look:
