News overload in the past day or two...

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog - Watch Joss Whedon's latest bout of brilliance while you still can.
  
• Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic MMO - Finally!
  
• DC Universe Online - Sounds like its coming along nicely.
  
• Champions Online - Lots of recent coverage of this superhero MMO too.
  
• Watchmen - I'm watching the Watchmen.
  
• The Dark Knight - It's been a loooong week so I'm passing on the midnight show, but I'll definitely be visiting Gotham this weekend.

It's a good time to be a geek!

Jewel Staite and a number of other actors are auctioning off dinner dates on eBay to fund cancer treatments for a fellow actor named Babz Chula (which explains the sign Jewel is holding in the photo above)...

The winning bidder will receive a free dinner with Paul McGillian and Jewel Staite at a pre-selected restaurant in Vancouver, BC at a mutually agreeable date to be determined by both parties in between May 1, 2008 and December 1, 2009.

As any red-blooded sci-fi geek is aware, Jewel played the role of the adorable Kaylee in the Firefly TV series and the follow-up movie Serenity. She is currently appearing in Stargate Atlantis on the Sci-Fi Channel.

The auction runs through April 12th and is currently at $1,500 (Canadian). Other dinner dates include David Duchovny and Chris Carter from the X-Files, as well as other actors that you might (or might not) recognize.

So, anyone have a couple grand and a ticket to Vancouver to spare?

Cracked.com has a hilarious list of the 50 Reasons Lord of the Rings Sucks (referring to the movies).

A few selected favorites...

• Speaking of Orcs... The Orcs were obviously stolen from PC game maker Blizzard and its Warcraft series. Too bad Blizzard is apparently too scared to sue New Line over it.
• Homage or theft? The "happy village of little people" idea was stolen from Willow.
• Homage or theft II? The wise old wizard character was stolen from Harry Potter.
• What's that smell? As bad as the Lucasfilm internet leaks were with the last Star Wars trilogy, the filmmakers of Lord of the Rings allowed the paperback novelizations onto shelves years in advance. As if we needed any less of a reason to go see it.

However funny the list itself is, that's not really the point of this post. What's really interesting is the number of people who were moved to leave a comment ripping the article as if it were a serious criticism of the movies.

Now I'm sure that more than a few of the comments are from trolls just trying to stir things up, but I'm also sure that some moron well intentioned (but sarcastically challenged) individual somewhere feels that they struck a blow against the evil forces of sloppy journalism.

Things like this make me question whether there's any intelligent life on this planet.

Moviehole is reporting that a new Jack Ryan movie is in the works... A completely new Jack Ryan movie based on original material not written by Tom Clancy. Starring Ryan Gosling, who would be brand new to the series and the fourth actor to portray Ryan in the movies.

I can't be the only one who thinks this sounds like a bad idea...

I just uncovered an extremely disturbing fact while browsing for additional Cloverfield information on IMDB...

The gorgeous young actress pictured here is named Odette Yustman. She plays Beth, the love interest of the lead character in the movie, but she's definitely not a newcomer to show business. In fact, Odette got her start in movies as one of the kids in the class of Kindergarten Cop.

I am getting so old.

UPDATE: If you've arrived here via Google, don't miss my other Cloverfield entry, which discusses the secret message at the end of the movie.

Saw Cloverfield last night... I liked it a lot, although I think lots of people probably won't.

It's like Godzilla + Alien + The Blair Witch Project. And it's that last part that's going to be a problem for a lot of people. The movie is about a giant monster attack on New York City, but it's shot entirely from the point of view of the people on the street via a hand-held video camera, with all the shakiness and lack of focus that entails.

** VERY MINOR SPOILER ALERT **

Knowledgeable fans might want to stay for one of those "You're still here?" moments at the end of the credits, when a garbled radio transmission can be heard. Unfortunately, it was so garbled that no one in the theater could understand it.

In this interview, director Matt Reeves discusses the movie including the secret message at the end, although he won't divulge what exactly it is.

** MAJOR SPOILER ALERT **

After a little Googling, I found someone who claims to have recorded the audio and reversed it, resulting in the following message...

   boomp3.com

So, what do you think?

AOL/Moviefone has an exclusive sneak peek of the all-new U.S.S. Enterprise from J.J. Abrams' hotly anticipated Star Trek film, due out in December...

Click the image to make biggerer...

The folks behind the classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 are back together working on a new project, called Cinematic Titanic...

Looks pretty damn funny. The DVD is for sale here.

Yahoo Movies has the trailer for the next movie from Pixar, makers of such classics as Cars, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Toy Story, and my personal favorite Monsters, Inc.

WALL-E is the story about the last robot left behind after mankind has abandoned Earth. After 700 years of doing what he was built for - he'll discover what he's meant for.


Supposedly, the movie is going to have little to no spoken dialogue. Says director Andrew Stanton: "I'm basically making R2-D2: The Movie." That sounds a little dicey, but Pixar has definitely earned the benefit of the doubt from me.

Check out the new Wall-E trailer, as well as the official site. Also, check out the faux corporate site for Buy n Large, makers of the Wall-E robot line.

Wall-E is scheduled to hit theaters June 27th, 2008.

Ever wonder what Siskel and Ebert (or Ebert and Roeper) thought about Independence Day (2 thumbs down), That Thing You Do (2 thumbs up), or Serenity (2 thumbs up)?

Gene and I knew those old shows would be worth saving, but for a long time nobody agreed with us. In the years before home video, it seemed like a waste of expensive video tape to preserve hundreds of episodes of "Opening Soon at a Theater Near You," "Sneak Previews" or "At the Movies."

Fortunately, someone finally agreed with Ebert and started saving the old shows. Now, the past twenty-ish years of movie reviews are indexed and available for our (re)viewing pleasure at the Balcony Archive.