Hailing Frequencies, Issue #303
7.22.05 - 7.29.05
HELLO
And here's the three hundredth and third edition of "Hailing Frequencies."
If you want to be notified when this newsletter is updated, email me to be put on my "notification" list.
Well, no one seems to like the new format I tried last week, so we've gone back to the old one.
NEW AT THE SITE THIS WEEK
Ten New Star Wars Droids from Hasbro
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: A spoiler-phobic review
Daniel Jackson's New World, by Marla R. Reed
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
TV Listings for the Week
A weekly & one-page episode guide to your favorite sci-fi and fantasy TV
shows, plus VCR alerts.
Tim Burton is producing and Pamela Pettler will write a CGI film, 9, from Focus Features and based on the short animation by Shane Acker, who will direct. In a strange half-robotic, half-destroyed world, a mechanical creature attacks two floppy doll-things, 5 and 9. 5 is killed, and 9 has to rescue the trapped souls in the creature's talisman. The CGI of the short has a stop-motion look, so I'm guessing the film will too.
Cinescape's "scooper" says that Ridley Scott was asked about doing another Alien movie and said: "I'd love to - and we're talking", he said. I asked him would it star the originals and he said Sigourney's on-board, and he hopes Lance Henriksen might be interested too. But bottom line "Too early to even speculate...we haven't even finished the script yet."
And so, seeing as the script is still in the computer, let me often this plot as the only way I would be interested in Alien 5: Ripley wakes up and realizes that Alien 3 & 4 were nightmares she had in hypersleep, and Alien vs. Predator is just some bad late-night movie a moron did for the money. She and Newt and Hicks than have a kick-ass adventure battling the aliens which does not end with Ripley watch a real alien baby burst out of her gut.
I'm really starting to wonder if this ship has sailed. Does anyone even remember the she-always-dies cartoon from Liquid TV anymore? Even the star, Marton Csokas, told SCI FI Wire: "Well my recollection of Aeon Flux when I saw it...I loved the series, and I didn't understand or comprehend why that would want to be recreated...I had a meeting with Karyn Kusama, who alleviated a lot of those concerns [about the animated series], because her attempt and accordingly mine...was to take some of the themes and plant them in a more human sort of world....So that charmed me."
Csokas plays Trevor Goodchild, the scientist-leader of a walled city of human survivors in the distant future. Karyn Kusama directs, and the release date is December. 2.
FilmForce has three video interviews from Comic Con with Linda Park, James Callis, and Tahmoh Pennikett. It's your basic "I love the show" stuff, but fun.
Friday night's three-ring premiere garnered some nice ratings, with Stargate SG-1' getting a 2.1 HH rating, 2,610,000 viewers P2+ and 1.6 million P25-54. Stargate Atlantis got a 2.2 HH rating, 2,783,000 viewers P2+ and 1.9 million P25-54. Battlestar Galactica got a 2.6 HH rating, 3,053,000 total viewers (P2+) and 2.1 million P25-54. Cool.
Dynamic Forces and Universal Studios Consumer Product Group will produce comics based on the new Battlestar Galactica. Greg Pak will write them.
Jennifer Finnigan will show up as Alex Sinclair again in an upcoming "very special" Christmas episode, again showing a little more than the usual interest in Anthony Michael Hall. She told SCI FI Wire that they said, 'Whenever you have a window of time to come and do a little stint with us, we'd love it.' And so I said, 'Absolutely.' I love them....It's kind of a chase episode. We're trying to figure out who did it. The fun thing is that Michael Hall's character and my character really work together, because we're both psychics in different ways." Look for the episode in December...you know, Christmastime.
Well, the new (and tenth!) Doctor is David Tennant, and he looks likely to stick around a little longer. He's done a couple interviews online now, and calls himself a lifelong sci-fi fan and fan of Dr. Who in particular. Other famous Doctors include Sylvester McCoy, Tom Baker, William Hartnell, Paul McGann and one-season-wonder Christopher Eccleston.
You can also see Tennant as Barty Crouch, Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Starting tonight, 7/22 7 PM, with "Serenity, Pt 1," SCI FI Channel will run through the entire season of Firefly. After that, there will be SG1-'s "Avalon, Pt 2," and SA's "The Intruder," and BGS' "Valley of Darkness."
Check out the cover art for Serenity #1 (of 3) Written by Joss Whedon and Brett Mathews, the three-issue miniseries that fills in the gaps between the end of the series and the beginning of the film. "The crew of Serenity once again find themselves broke and on the wrong side of a number of very large firearms." Out now, full color, 32 pages, SRP $2.99
Blackfilm.com has posted some publicity pix and a synopsis of the movie. And check out the trailer.
You know, as long as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas just had a lot of mindless and gratuitous violence, it was okay, but now that people realize it has sex scenes in it, the bestselling videogame of 2004 has been re-rated at "adults only." Killing babies? Fine. Making babies? No!
Sideshow is coming out with a 1/4 Scale Premium Format Doctor Doom figure by Pablo Viggiano. Doom is seated in a throne, all made of hand-painted, high-quality polystone, and clothed in a fabric cloak, tunic and hood, completed with a leather belt and pistol holster. SRP $300.
As I mentioned earlier, they're making a movie of the game Dungeon Siege, and now the film's villain, Magus-turned-bad Gallian, has been cast: Ray Liotta! (I'm sorry, but I just find this really funny.) He joins Leelee Sobieski, Will Sanderson (as Bastian), Jason Statham, Brian J. White, and Eva Padberg. Uwe Boll directs.
BBCNews has some fun pictures up regarding the first sales of HBP.
Well, even knowing that the sales would be phenomenal, I don't think we expected to hear that HBP sold 6.9 million copies in the US alone the first 24 hours, which works out to about 250,000 books an hour. It sold another two million copies in the UK at the same time.
Beijing News reports that before those 24 hours were over, the Shui Mu Tsing Hua bulletin board service posted the full text as an unauthorized e-book, while in India a pirated print version is selling for $6.
From TheLeakyCauldron: In a question and answer session with Great Britain Prime Minister Tony Blair at Parliament, the subject of HP came up:
Q8. Miss Anne Begg: Now that the summer recess is almost upon us, will my right hon. Friend have time to do what millions of people did this weekend and read the new Harry Potter novel by Scotland's most successful writer? What would he say to people who have been critical of those books, especially as they have done more to improve literacy and children's enjoyment of reading than even this Government's excellent education policies and everything that I did in 19 years as an English teacher?
The Prime Minister: The Harry Potter brief in my file is somewhat thin, which only shows that my officials' sense of importance is not what it should be. I was told by someone, however, that in the first chapter of the new book the Minister of Magic comes out of a picture to confront the Prime Minister. I am still searching for the Minister.
Goblet of Fire's coming to theatres November 18.
Speaking at interview la-la land, Comic Con, Damon Lindelof told SCI FI Wire that we will be going down that hatch next season and figuring out a lot of things about the island as well as the people on it. However, there will be some definite changes as well: "I mean, I think that our attitude is not to do more of the same. They're going to go into the hatch, and what they find inside is going to change their state of being for quite some time. So we're going to continue to explore the characters as we always have. The show will be the same in the way that we tell the stories. But season two is really about exploring the island along the way, and we just hope that people think what they find is cool."
Maggie Grace (Shannon) hopes that the show will continue to explore her relationship with Sayid and says there will be some explanations given for her somewhat...self-centered character. Of her co-star Naveen Andrews, she says, "My personal suspicion...I think that he was shot mainly so he could be shirtless for the first half of the season.
Congrats to Michael Giacchino for his Emmy nomination for Outstanding Music Composition For A Series (Dramatic Underscore) for Lost.
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN
Pirates of
the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest has a July 2006 release date.
Pirates 3 should be out for summer 2007.
Yes, it's true. Paramount will smurf a movie -- three of them, actually, in 3-D, CGI-style. The first should smurf theaters in 2008, the 50th anniversary of when Papa and Co.'s smurfed as a Belgian comic strip.
Ron Wilkerson has a touching tribute to James Doohan at Trek Nation.
And here's one from sexualuniverse:
Everything worked on the Enterprise because he was there,
He was just as competent in the captain's chair,
But he never wanted to be anything but an engineer,
Scotty's beamed away, shed a tear.
You could always count on him in a fight,
or drink with you till you both were tight,
he'd play his pipes to mourn or to cheer,
Scotty's beamed away, shed a tear.
He always had a grin and a technical trick up his sleeve,
except when he'd had a little too much shore leave,
Star Fleet, and we, have lost someone dear,
Scotty's beamed away, shed a tear.
In honor of Doohan, NASA's Opportunity rover team gave a set of small loose rocks on the Martian Meridiani plains on the name "Scotty." Spike TV is preempting its normal Friday primetime lineup to present a two-hour block of TOS episodes that feature Scotty.
Screenwriter Paul Hernandez will make his first film as a director about the true-life creation of Star Trek conventions, beginning from the days some Trekkie guys had a Star Trek viewing party to meet Tekkie girls. He described the opening scenes of Star Date to SCI FI Wire "Picture this: In the opening scene it's 1972, and a couple is necking in this car, and this guy is very visibly a nerd, and you wonder what she's doing with him. Then, he notices the time, and he says he has to run home because there's a rerun of a Star Trek episode that he has missed, and he never saw it. Well, she breaks up with him."
Silly girl
We've got some details about the collector's Star Trek: Nemesis on DVD. It streets October 4th, SRP $19.99
2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen Transfer
English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Track
English DTS 5.1 Surround Track
English 2.0 Dolby Surround Track
French 2.0 Dolby Surround Track
Audio Commentary with Director Stuart Baird
Audio Commentary with Producer Rick Berman
Text Commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda
Nemesis Revisited Featurette
The Romulan Senate Featurette
Storyboarding the Action Featurette
The Scimitar Featurette
The Enterprise E Featurette
Build and Rebuild Featurette
Romulan Lore Featurette
Shinzon & The Viceroy Featurette
Romulan Design Featurette
Four-Wheeling in the Final Frontier Featurette
Screen Test: Tom Hardy as Shinzon
New Selection of Deleted Scenes
- Wesley's New Mission (59s)
- Data and B-4 (1m 50s)
- The Chance for Peace (56s)
- A Loss of Self (35s)
- Remember Him? (Extended) (1m 47s)
- Cleaning out Data's Quarters (1m 43s)
- Crusher at Starfleet Medical (42s)
Original Featurettes
- New Frontiers: Stuart Baird on Directing Nemesis
- A Star Trek Family's Final Journey
- Red Alert! - Shooting the Action of Nemesis
- A Bold Vision of the Final Frontier
Storyboards, Production & Prop Archives
Star Trek: Nemesis Theatrical & Teaser Trailers
Three Eastereggs
Four cover scans and commentary, check out DVD Answers.
Perpetual Entertainment has launched an official site for the Star Trek massive multiplayer online game, Star Trek Online. The site makes the game sound pretty good, but notes that full development is expected to take at least two years.
Lou would like to purchase the complete collection of TOS DVDs, preferably all three seasons, but "I will buy only one if you have only one." Anyone out there?
STAR WARS
STARGATES
Congrats to Joel Goldsmith for his Emmy nomination for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music for Stargate Atlantis.
This Week's Question: Who's the first character to show up on a Star Trek episode who loved and collected books?
Send your answer to scifi@about.com. All correctly answering trivia maniacs will have their names mentioned in the next letter. The first winner gets to make a request, anything they like -- within reason -- for the next "Hailing Frequencies" Issue. Please let me know if you don't want me to post your email address if you win.
Last Week's Question: What funky thing do Tholians do to their chocolate mousse?
Answer: They age the beans for 400 years.
No winners.
Send in your best caption for the picture below. The best (as in, my favorite) entry will appear in next week's issue.
[Insert caption here.]
THIS WEEK'S WINNER:
“Here’s the plan… We sneak in pretending to be Browncoats, and when Joss is thanking the fans, we strike! Have you got your ‘Bring Back Farscape’ banner ready?” - Raymond
Honorable Mentions..
"Have you got any ideas about how I can cure acid reflux disease?" - BTCHONWHLS
"I BELIEVE, if you are trying to pick your nose, aim a bit to the left. That is your nose, isn't it? Your digits look long enough to tickle the back of your brain." - Sue
"Are those fingernails real, or do you use the press-on kind?" - Debra
This week's topic: Thoughts on the new seasons for the Stargates and BSG? And what do you think of the new format? Is it bad? It's easier for me, but if it's no good, I can go back to the other way.
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I'm not crazy about the new format - it's kinda choppy, the advertising blurb now distorts more pages, but I'm on a Mac, using Safari, so I'm definitely in the minority here...
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I dislike the multiple pages, primarily because it gives About four more chances to jam more irritating advertisements at me.
evay
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The format is...not the greatest. It gets all wonky when the ads are inserted and I know that is not your fault. Maybe there is a happy medium somewhere. Is Patricia Arquette still working?
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Sorry,"two thumbs down" on the multi-page layout. I'd much rather cruise a single page with Page Up/Down keys than go back & forth between multiple pages. Please revert to the single-page format. Thanks!
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Format sucks.
BITCHONWHLS
***
[on another topic]
The Stargate SG-1
that was once the best sci fi show on television died an excruciatingly painful
and unnecessary death on February 20, 2004. Despite the brief thirteen minutes
of hope at the beginning of Season 9's Avalon Part 1, this show's loudly trumpeted
resurrection on July 15, 2005 died being born.
Stargate Atlantis on the other hand seems to have pulled itself out of its Season
1 muddy waters and may just go the distance.
***
[on another topic]
Thanks for a great
review of the Harry Potter series. I absolutely agree - and as a 48-year-old
mom who has been "wearing her eyes out" for over 40 years (by reading
under the covers by the light of my lighted-dial electric alarm clock) I also
found a sanity and reassurance that there will always be people in the world
who are willing to fight evil...whether it's Hitler or Voldemort or the Snow
Witch, or even the Wicked Witch of the West.
It keeps me standing up for what I believe - even if it's in a tiny corner of
Massachusetts and my biggest problem with evil is what to allow my kids to watch
on TV.
Thanks for another
voice of sanity on the Internet - especially referring to the Rowlings books.
Harry, Ron and Hermione can be enjoyed for simply the good story they are, all
allegories aside.
CJ Sulesky
***
Next week's topic: Are War of the Worlds and Fantastic Four the same movie?
***
Send me something if you've got something to say. It can be about anything that's on your mind! (Please let me know if you don't want your email address to accompany your name in either contest or for the LTE.)
TOP MOVIES FROM THE NUMBERS
1 Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory.....$79,365,494
2 Wedding Crashers, The....................$49,954,000
3 Fantastic Four..............................$107,944,478
4 War of the Worlds, The..................$197,817,521
5 Batman Begins..............................$185,583,513
6 Mr. And Mrs. Smith........................$170,272,489
7 Herbie: Fully Loaded........................$57,704,000
8 Dark Water....................................$20,660,000
9 Bewitched.....................................$58,215,000
10 Madagascar................................$185,170,185
TOP SF/F NETWORK SHOWS, NGR, 6/27 - 7/3
1. Medium 5.1
2. Lost 5.0
3. Desperate Housewives 3.1
4. Smallville 1.6
TOP SF/F SYNDICATED SHOWS, NGR, 6/20 - 6/26
1. Stargate SG-1
1.5
2. Twilight Zone 1.4
3. The X-Files 1.4
4. Buffy 1.2
5. She Spies 1.2
6. Andromeda 1.1
7. Angel 1.1
8. Mutant X 1.1
9. The Outer Limits 1.1
TOP SCI-FI/FANTASY BOOKS, Amazon - 7/14/05
1. Harry Potter
and the Half-Blood Prince
2. Eldest (Inheritance 2)
3. The Da Vinci Code
4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
5.The Time Traveler's Wife
6. Harry Potter box set
7. Angels and Demons
8. Narnia box set
9.. The Five People You Meet in Heaven
10. Potter Schoolbooks box set
TOP SCI-FI/FANTASY DVDS, Amazon - 7/19/05
1. Constantine
2. Sin City
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
4. Star Wars trilogy
5. Dead Like Me season two
6. Lost season one
7. The Incredibles
8. Cinderella platinum edition
9. The Polar Express
10. Earth 2 complete series
HAILING FREQUENCIES CLOSED
Visit the "Hailing
Frequencies" Archive
http://scifi.about.com/blhailarchive.htm
Julia Houston
Sci-Fi/Fantasy Guide @ About.com
scifi@about.com