Since Proyas helmed I, Robot, which took a few slight liberties with the Isaac Asimov source material, you can expect a certain amount of creative license with Jonathan Hoag, which Heinlein wrote in 1942 under a pseudonym, John Riverside. But Proyas expresses reverence for the source material, in a Hollywood Reporter article:

"I read this story as a kid, and it really stayed with me," Proyas said. "It's part of my creative DNA."

Here's how someone on Amazon summarizes it:

Mr. Hoag has a problem: in the evenings he finds a curious reddish residue under his fingernails, and no memory of what he was doing during the day to get that residue. So he hires a husband-and-wife team of detectives to follow him around and find out what is really going on. The trail leads to non-existent 13th floors, some very shadowy characters who are part of the Order of the Bird, and a conclusion that reality really isn't what we think it is. Some good suspense, reasonable characterization, but the final answer that Heinlein presents may leave you feeling a little let down, and I had difficulty believing in the scenario.

The novella appears to be out of print, but copies of a collected edition are available on Amazon for as little as 14 cents, plus shipping. According to blogger Chris Perridas, Heinlein wrote the story in a hurry to raise money for his wife's gall bladder operation. [Hollywood Reporter]

In the comic, Moore awakens from this fake world and the authorities immediately consider him a threat. Soon, he's under constant attack, and has to zoom into various virtual worlds to stay ahead of the government. He rides around on his motorcycle, blowing things up, getting in fights with the government and spreading his forbidden knowledge of actual reality.

I hope that online star Colin Salmon stays on as the Jonas for the TV series. You may remember him as the bad ass from Resident Evil who was chopped into itty bitty pieces via lasers. [Jonas Moore]

Once each year, the Office of Naval Research holds a conference where they explain what they're currently working on. This year, the ONR detailed several weapons systems that seem like they were lifted straight out of your favorite military sci-fi novel.

Solid state fiber lasers could be mounted in "pods" on aircraft, able to deliver 100 kW blasts. Free Electron Lasers will begin development in 2010, and will hopefully have the ability to take out incoming ordinance or even small attack (or suicide) boats. The lasers don't stop there - helicopters could be equipped with laser terrain finding gear to help them land in "brownout" conditions.

Lasers not sexy enough? How about directed microwave weapons? I've been dreaming of one of these for years, to take out the thumping audio systems of cars that drive past my house. The Navy would rather use them to fry the electronics in enemy equipment.

The ultimate naval weapon might be the hyper-velocity railgun. It could propel projectiles up to 230 miles with killer accuracy at speeds close to Mach 7. The Navy holds a world record for "highest electromagnetic muzzle energy launch of a projectile" using such a weapon. I have no idea what that means, but I know I wouldn't want to get hit by one. These megaguns aren't without their flaws, though. That kind of muzzle velocity tends to destroy the barrel of the gun, and each firing draws something like three million amps. Image by: U.S. Navy.

Navy Wants Lots of Lasers [Defense Tech]

I think everyone on the cast and crew seems most excited about the modern-day twist. Producer Trevor Hopkins explains that Bill Gallagher's script doesn't try to copy the original show, which is probably a good thing. Instead the new version is more about post 9/11 security issues.

It's the first time our post-9/11 anxieties have been merged with a tripped-out 1960s style, so it'll be interesting to see how it meshes. I'm excited to see how they'll pump the inhabitants of the Village for information, Prisoner-style, yet remain true to modern times.

But even more intriguing is the pairing of Jim Caviezel as Number 6 and Ian McKellen as the authority figure Number 2. Caviezel replaces Patrick McGoohan's defiance with an air of "Holy crap, I'm confused — what's going on? I'm not a number." And McKellen is just a first class actor all the way. Let the whacked-out battle of wits commence.

[AMC]

So basically you don't need that speed to stay awake. You just need to, well, stay awake. The researchers speculate that amphetamines emulate the body's natural response to sleeplessness, which is to boost your alertness with extra dopamine. Speed tricks your body into thinking it needs a boost after a sleepless night.

But there's a good reason why people don't get addicted to staying up all night. According to Science Daily:

The rise in dopamine following sleep deprivation may promote wakefulness to compensate for sleep loss. "However, the concurrent decline in cognitive performance, which is associated with the dopamine increases, suggests that the adaptation is not sufficient to overcome the cognitive deterioration induced by sleep deprivation and may even contribute to it," said study author [Dr. Nora] Volkow.

So I guess the message is that if you want to stay up all night, and keep that cognitive performance going, you'll have to turn to drugs. Or maybe you could just get some sleep.

One Sleepless Night Increases Dopamine in the Human Brain [Science Daily]

Talking to Newsarama, Eick admitted that webisodes are definitely part of the plan for Battlestar's final season:

Yes, we are doing webisodes but when they are premiering I am not positive. Like the webisodes we have done before, they will continue on the story threads that don’t make the cut. I don’t want to give too much away but they are going to follow the same paradigm as we’ve done before.

That paradigm would presumably be The Resistance, the 2006 online-only 10-part lead-in to Galactica's third season, and the Razor "flashbacks" that trailed last year's one-off movie. Does this mean that you'll only get the full story behind why this has all happened before and will all happen again if we tune in online?

David Eick Talks Battlestar Galactica Past, Present, Future [Newsarama]

Though this movie is chock full of weirdness — there's everything from hippie freakout dances to stripping and women in various sorts of nudie-cutie bondage — this scene really sums it up for me. I think it's the idea of scientists hiring strippers while wearing those weird hats, or maybe the dubbing on the old man's voice. If you're looking for a movie that uses a mad scientist plot purely for the sake of tying together unrelated scenes of hot women in "danger," or if you like to see labs filled with bubbling bongs, then this movie is for you. And by "you," I mean everybody. [Kiss Me Monster via IMDB]

Obviously all my cries for a bigger role for Lacey were rewarded, and the loss of Tyler for an episode was an acceptable sacrifice. Tyler's back for the last two episodes of the season, and I'm worried Lacey will be shuffled back to the backdrop once again. In an ideal universe, we'd see some further development of the Lacey/MM romance — and after last night, I believe I can call it that — before the season ends.

So on the off chance that you've somehow failed to see "The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation" yet, there were two Lacey-related shocks. First, that she's been having some very impressively lit sex dreams starring Pip, the evil plagiarist son of the building owner whose property Wendy, Lacey and the others rent illegally. Actually, Pip is quite cute, despite being evil and idiotic. I was just thinking the other day that I was sad we hadn't seen much of him lately. And then the Middleman's reaction to hearing about Lacey's Pip-sex dreams was the best part.

And then, just when I'd finally recovered from the crazed Pip sex fantasies (is this show really on ABC Family?) there was the second shock: The Middleman and Lacey are in love.

Oh, and there was a third Lacey surprise, which wasn't a surprise to me because show-creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach mentioned it in our interview: the emergence of the super-skeptic ultra-rationalist side of Lacey. The Carl Sagan-reading, spiritualism-doubting daughter of Dr. Barbara Thornfield MD PhD. I like that side of Lacey, just because it makes her seem less of an airhead, and it'll be interesting to see how she deals with the inevitable revelation of the truth about Wendy's job.

Okay, so this episode wasn't all about Lacey. As I mentioned, the "A" plot was another one, like the tuba one and the boy-band one, that felt a bit like something to do in between all the cool character stuff. As the show acknowledged by mentioning Buffy The Vampire Slayer early on, the vampire puppet thing has been done before, and it's a tough comparison to invite. I don't think this episode's puppet-Vlad-The-Impaler storyline was quite up to the comparison with "Smile Time," one of the best two or three Angel episodes ever, I'm afraid. It had a few funny moments, especially the great old TV footage of the ventriloquist putting on Vladdy and going on a killing rampage.

But mostly the vampire puppet storyline seemed like an excuse to get the Middleman and Lacey to admit to their aforementioned mutual love... which I'm fine with. And that wedding scene was both creepy and touching. I liked the glimpse of a puppet MM too. I wonder if Lacey really doesn't remember anything about it. I'm assuming we'll learn more about the other woman the Middleman loves in the next two episodes. (As long as it's not Wendy. In that case, I'd rather not know.)

I'm still not that crazy about Noser as a character, but at least he's no longer just a one-joke guy. He has a thuggish roommate, Anvil, and a very silly secret past. And a hidden talent. But it's funny that, in an episode which focused on him, he still wasn't that much of a presence, since he was missing most of the time.

So pretty much everybody, except maybe Wendy, got some development and revealed some new facets this week. Even Pip — although I really hope he doesn't get redeemed or anything. Pip should really stay Pip. It's why we love him, or at least want to have embarrassing sex dreams about him.

Venter and the other authors of the study say that sometimes people of the same race share genetic similarities, but not often enough to base drug targeting on racial groups. The researchers prove their point by examining the two most-studied human genomes in the world: Those of white guys Craig Venter and James Watson. Turns out that the men's genomes are dissimilar enough that they would likely respond quite differently to common antidepressants — despite the fact that both identify as white. (This is particularly amusing for those who have followed Watson's career, since he was recently suspended from his job for racist comments about the genetic inferiority of blacks.)

Write the authors:

[Venter and Watson's] genetic differences underscore the importance of personalized genomics over a race-based approach to medicine. To attain truly personalized medicine, the scientific community must aim to elucidate the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to drug reactions and not be satisfied with a simple race-based approach . . . One's ethnicity/race is, at best, a probabilistic guess at one's true genetic makeup.

This study, while mostly focused on personalized pharmaceuticals, has far-reaching implications. Essentially the authors are arguing that race has little to do with people's genomes, which flies in the face of at least a century of received wisdom that race is "genetic" as well as cultural. Write the scientists, "This [study] speaks to the value of knowing genomic sequence instead of relying on a patient's appearance or self-identified ethnicity."

The authors also go on to say that sometimes even when a racial group appears to present similar biological problems, this may have less to do with genetics than environment:

For example, the higher incidence of hypertension in African Americans has been linked to darker skin color, but this may be due instead to socioeconomic status and higher levels of stress rather than to genetics.5 Knowing that socioeconomic status is related to hypertension allows us to identify individuals at risk regardless of race. Given the complex nature of drug responses, it would ultimately better serve all to dissect the relevant factors of a drug response instead of categorically stereotyping a culture with a presumed genetic background.

I am impressed. This quiet little study, published in an academic journal, has implications go far beyond the world of medicine and into the realms of politics and even (dare I say it) social justice.

Individual Genomes Instead of Race for Personalized Medicine [Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics]

Bikini FemBot is one of a series of robots designed by Etsy's Spaceboyjordo, each of which promises to

[aid] in safety & protection [and help] prevent ninjas, cowboys, aliens, pirates, dogs w/ sweaters, creepy uncles, and emo kids from entering your zone by using its robot skillz. For best results place robot on shelf facing a window and/or door of your zone. See results instantly. In case of detached limb during combat, acquire a hot glue servicing mechanism device and reattach where necessary. Sometimes robot may become fierce. Batteries not included, nor necessary. Robot personalities may vary. See a physician if complications occur.

Each of the robots are hand-made and one-of-a-kind; my favorite may be Yoshi, the Mega Robot. There's just something about his bright-green awesomeness that gets to me every time I look at him.

Holla at dem Bots yo! [Etsy]

Speaking at the British Film Institute, Gibbons hinted at plans for the movie's second planned DVD release:

Dave has seen a 2 hour, 45 minute rough assembly of the – in his words – “very sexy, very violent” movie which he expects will receive an 18 certificate from the British censor. There’s no Black Freighter animation, that will be released as a separate ‘Animatrix’ style DVD and probably (eventually) be remarried with the live action film in a future ‘Absolute Watchmen’ DVD release.

(The term Absolute Watchmen refers to DC Comics' deluxe hardcover versions of their comics, which collect storylines with background material and often - as is the case for Watchmen - recolored pages to reflect updates to printing technology; the end results are called Absolute [Name of Book].)

But still: A version of Watchmen complete with Tales Of The Black Freighter animation? Somewhere, a million Alan Moore fans are very happy indeed.

Dave Gibbons Q&A, and the Watchmen SuperTrailer [TimesOnline]

Funny and filled with good, crunchy facts, The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame is like "Behind the Music" for scientists. We learn a little about the scientists' brilliance, and then discover how it all went terribly, terribly wrong. Plus, about half the scientists that Wilson and Long discuss are fictional, which gives the profiles of real-life scientists a delightful, sensationalistic flair.

Each chapter gives you a little backstory about the scientist and then analyzes just how mad they really were. The armchair psychologizing of the fictional scientists is especially amusing. Here's a snippet from the analysis of Dr. No, of James Bond fame:

High levels of intelligence and control (not to mention nuclear capacity) are dangerous weapons in the hands of a scientist who exhibits severe symptoms of antisocial and narcissistic personality disorder.

Mixed in with the pop culture analysis of scientists like The Fly's Seth Brundle and Dr. Evil are factual discussions of psychology and even nuclear physics.

Despite the inherently amusing idea of putting Captain Nemo and Dr. Moreau on the analyst's couch, the chapters on real-life scientists are far more riveting than the ones about fictional characters. We are treated to a fascinating account of Stanley Milgram, the man who became famous in the 1950s for testing how people would respond when told to shock a person to death in a lab experiment (the people "shocked" were actors who were told to act like they were in pain and dying). Many of the people Milgram tested continued to shock a person they were convinced was dying, simply because an authority figure (Milgram himself, in his white lab coat) told them to do it.

And as I mentioned earlier, Wilson and Long's account of Jack Whiteside Parsons was amazing — I wish there were a whole book (or an episode of "Behind the Science") about him. While he was at the helm of the lab that builds U.S. spaceships to this day, he was an active member of the Church of Thelema, founded by "magick" practitioner Aleister Crowley. He also threw hedonistic sex parties at his house. Parsons' wife Helen was in a polyamorous relationship with both Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard, and the three lived together in a large house along with other members of their local Church of Thelema congregation. Whoa, way to go Parsons. I never knew rocket science was so naughty.

Don't even get me started on Sidney Gottlieb, the scientist and CIA agent who was famous for dosing everybody with L.S.D. to "see what would happen."

If you love bizarro science and true crime novels, The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame will deliver a strong dose of both and keep you up late reading. If the analysis of fictional madness begins to seem twee, just skip to the real-life stuff and be amazed.

Mad Scientist Hall of Fame [via Amazon]

Some of these action pics appear to take place in some kind of funhouse, surrounded by carnival finery. Could this be some kind of Joker lair? Considering what happened the last time Barbara faced the Joker, is it really a good idea to remind people? (In the comics, Alan Moore decided to prove how hardcore he was by having the Joker shoot Barbara in the spine and then take dirty pictures of the newly paralyzed girl.) Also, is that Man-Bat, aka chiropteromorph scientist Kirk Langstrom, in the backdrop of one shot? We totally need Lego Man-Bat!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is in theaters December 19.

Let's cut to the chase, the pedestrian point system, what happened to it?

I loved [producer] Roger [Corman]'s movie. And one of the things that fascinated me about it, I mean really fascinated me about it, and I've had a lot of time to think about it, is: how did the Death Race become the national sport of America? It's not like the American president woke up one morning and went, "I know! We're going to make the national sport of America driving around in these killer cars that are outfitted with guns and knives, running people over. And we'll televise it." You know, he clearly latched onto an existing sport or an existing trend or some kind of underground thing and developed it. And that always fascinated me. I thought, you know, how did the Death Race come about?

And that was really the intention of our movie, was to do the genesis of the Death Race. In a believable way, how could something like this evolve in the near future? You know, the whole point system, it's not like we don't run people over in this movie. Plenty of people get run over. Plenty of people get killed. It's just you don't score points for doing it. There were versions of the script that had the point system in, and versions that didn't have it. And ultimately I felt that for the story we were telling it was too close to the genesis of the Death Race to have the point system. The point system felt it belonged to a more developed form of the sport.

Yeah, you did say that there was a line in there about how he's getting squeamish.

Yeah, exactly. You know, I felt that if you were a fan of the original movie and you see this movie, you can see how the point system evolved. I didn't really feel that we had to have points to make it Death Race. Yeah, and I think it's part of, you know, re-imagining a property like this. You know, it's like Batman Begins. It wasn't Joel Schumacher's Batman. I think it's better that it wasn't Joel Schumacher's Batman, but it did keep a lot of the characters the same. It just told a different story and told it a different way. And that's how I approached this movie: as a re-imagining rather than a direct remake. It was a prequel rather than a direct remake. And that's why no points. But if we are lucky enough to make a sequel, I think that is one of the things that we would do in the sequel, the evolution of the points. Again, all leading up to what Roger Corman's movie represented.

Was the fact that you decided to put the point system in the sequel due to internet fan outrage?

[Laughs] No. I loved the original Death Race, a lot. It was a very influential movie for me. One of the things I'm fascinated with [is] how did running people over become the national sport of America and the point system that came of it.

You shot this without special effects. Did you want to give it a more 70s feel?

Yes.

But you were obviously inspired by Mad Max. Were there any other films, 70s films, like Vanishing Point that inspired you?

Oh, I grew up with Vanishing Point, Two Lane Blacktop, Walter Hill's The Driver, Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway, The Road Warrior, Bullett, The French Connection—- I mean those are some of my favorite movies. And you know, those movies gave you a visceral thrill because they were real. When you see Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway, and you see those cars crunching into one another, damn it looks good! Because bits are really flying off the cars, not CG shit flying off the cars. It's real, and the physics are real as well. And that's the kind of movie I wanted to make, but I wanted to make it with the best kind of technology now. So instead of spending our money on six months worth of guys crunching on computers, generating computer generated cars, we spent our money on a year's worth of preparation, building camera rigs, special camera rigs, that would get the camera closer to the action than was physically possible in the 1970s.

You know, the 1970s, when they shot these movies, sometimes they got shots from inside the cars, sometimes they got shots from cameramen on the cars, but they were always car mounted. I wanted to get the camera in there and move the camera. I wanted to get the cars to drive into the cameras at high speeds, so we built one of my favorite rigs. We built a rig that had a camera and was completely ringed with basketballs. So it was this big giant ball. We stick it in the middle of the road, and the cars would drive at it. There is a shot in the very first race, when the original Frankenstein drives, where the car slides around the corner, and it looks like it hits the camera, and it does. And then the continuation of that is really funny because the camera just rolls away, bounces away, and it hits the wall. We developed rigs like that that would allow us to have real impacts. We killed a lot of cameras in the making of the movie. But no people.

What were the things that proved problematic in some of those scenes, in terms of the cars?

It was really doing everything practical. I mean, we spent a year designing the cars. I was insistent that we wanted real armor plating and real firing machine guns. And the further we got into it the more complicated it became. So we weren't just making a car movie, we were making a war movie. So as well as watching all these 70s car movies, we watched Saving Private Ryan, we watched Black Hawk Down. There's an element to this movie that is like a war film, or it is like a Second World War fighter pilot movie, because the guns are hard-mounted on the cars. So in a way you have to line up where the airplanes had to line up in the Second World War to really get a bead on someone and be able to fire at them. The closer we got to the shooting of the movie the more complicated it became to do it practical. People started saying, "You know, maybe we should start doing some visual effects. Maybe you shouldn't have the machine guns firing, and we'll put it all in as visual—we'll do CG shells flying out of it." I'm like, "No, that's The Matrix."

I don't want to do that. They did it really well in the first Matrix movie and really badly in the second and third Matrix movies. It's old fashioned now. I don't want to see that. I want to see—we're going to have a Vulcan cannon, mounted on the side of Tyrese's truck. Normally they mount one of those on a Black Hawk gunship. His car has two of them. It fires 6000 shells per minute. I want to see 6000 shells tumbling out the back of that thing. So we did everything practical. Just to reload the guns on Tyrese's car literally took an hour. You would do one take, and then you would have to get the armorer to come in and reload the machine guns, because there is a limit to how many shells you can carry on the car. So practical gunfire was very difficult. Getting cars to spin thirty feet in the air was [also] very difficult. The death of the Dreadnaught was something where everybody came to me at some point and said, "Paul, we should really do this in miniature. We understand that you want to do everything practical, but we really feel that this is like an impossible stunt. To drive a seventy-five foot armor-plated truck into a metal post at sixty miles per hour and dead-stop it...we don't think it can be done." And I'm like, "You know what, let's try it. Let's do it."

And we tested it twice, and each time the truck did something completely different, because it's not an exact science when you do things practically. If you do it in the computer you got a guy that just punches in the numbers and you know exactly what's going to happen and if you don't like it you can change it, but it's never going to look real. If you do it for real, you never know quite what you are going to get. So the stunt that is in the movie, we ringed the Dreadnaught with fifteen cameras, and we had really good camera men. I said, "I think this thing is going to go like that, but I don't know. We've tested it twice, and it's done something completely different. So be on your toes." I think that also gives the movie a kind of, gives it a cinema vérité, gives it a war zone feeling.

Most of the movie is all hand-held, because the camera had to have to freedom to move. They couldn't be locked off because the cars could go anywhere. Sometimes the shots are a little out of focus, obviously. Cars have been coming right at them, and they have to kind of get out of the way. But I think it really adds to the thrill of the movie. We watched a lot of war zone reportage as well, and that was kind of a feeling that I thought we would have to try to emulate, but the cameramen were so under stress because the bullets were flying at them and the cars were flying at them, that we kind of got that rugged hand-held feeling naturally.

So is Death Race a cool a idea to make a movie out of, or maybe a warning to a reality obsessed culture?

I think it's a cool movie for sure, but Roger's movie was a very satirical, a very openly satirical, movie about the American media and where he thought American society was going. Ours is a different kind of film. It's not as openly satirical as Roger's is. It's played more straight. It has more comedy in it, but it is played straight as an action movie. But I think whereas his satire is explicit, ours is implicit in the movie. It's a warning of where we certainly feel reality television could take us. Ten years ago wrestling used to be fake, but it was big. Now no one cares about wrestling, it's all about ultimate fighting. It's about real guys being in an octagon beating the hell out of one another. How long before somebody dies? I mean, it's gonna happen, and when it happens you can bet your bottom dollar they are going to sell a million DVDs of the fight. And when people realize the profits that can be made out of the possibility of death in these sporting events, it may not happen in North America, but you can bet your dollar it is going to happen somewhere in the world and it is going to be available on import or be available on the Internet, and it is going to be a big business. And that was what we felt was the first baby step towards what we portrayed in Death Race.

This is such a guy movie. Was adding the super curvy females a way to salt this up a little bit?

Well, there were women in the original movie — not as proactive as they are in this film — but for me as a filmmaker I have always felt that my movies have strong women in them, whether it is Alien Vs. Predator or Resident Evil. And if you look at Resident Evil that's a very male-centric game, but the movies have always had very strong female protagonists. Right from my very first movie I've just been very interested in that. I've always liked movies with very strong female protagonists, and this movie is no different for me. The drivers tend to be men, but, for example with Joan Allen, I thought, you know, we are making a prison movie here, and we're following in the footsteps of so many good movies with great prison governors. There's Shawshank, there's Escape from Alcatraz, there's Birdman of Alcatraz, there are so many. How do we differentiate our prison governor from them? How do we do something different? So we don't invite all of these kind of, like, unfair and probably unfavorable comparisons? And I thought the most interesting thing to do, which I'd never seen done, was to have a female warden.

And it's not like it doesn't really exist. Jean Woodford was the prison governor at San Quentin for ten years, and now she runs all the correctional facilities in California. So she runs twelve different jails, including Corcoran, which is the toughest jail in America. So the fact is that female prison governors exist, it's just that they have never been portrayed. I thought it would be very interesting to have that, and also very interesting to have an actress like Joan Allen, who I always see in the movies, she always seems like the moral center to the film she's in. You know, she's always the good heart of these movies. So I thought how interesting to take someone who is usually the moral center and make them the exact opposite, make them like the evil part of our movie.

It's awesome. She's had three Oscar nominations. Now that she's said "cocksucker," I really feel this is the performance, best supporting actress. I've got to tell you, that scene, it was amazing, because when we shot it, the very first take we did of it, she was great, the take was fantastic. The first take was unusable because all the camera people were filming, and then she says "Okay, cocksucker!" And they all went "Gah!" They were all shocked to see Joan Allen swear. The first take was all out of focus, because everyone was all "Oh my God!" They couldn't believe it. It was like hearing their mother swear. It was just, just wrong. That is why when the movie plays we always get such great reactions. People are so shocked by it.

There's way more great suggestions over at the link. [LibraryThing]

So as you've probably heard, Whedon's original pilot sets in motion a ton of subplots and launches a bunch of character arcs, which we all hope will play out over the course of seven (or twenty) years. And the new pilot is much more straightforward. It just introduces the idea that Echo (Eliza Dushku) is an empty vessel, who can be programmed to "be" anybody and have any skills.

Here's the good news: the first two episodes of Dollhouse will be a nice one-two punch that will hopefully draw in tons of addicted viewers. The new second episode isn't just a whole cannery full of cans of worms — it's also like a mini-thriller, a suspenseful action movie full of weird twists and turns. In particular, the most compelling twists revolve around FBI agent Paul Ballard (Battlestar Galactica's Tahmoh Penikett).

Ballard is the guy who's on the trail of the Dollhouse, where you can hire a mind-wiped "Active" to play any role you want. We see him in the first episode too, including an awesome scene of him justifying his investigation juxtaposed with a sequence where he kickboxes someone and nearly loses. But he really comes into his own in the second episode, as the Dollhouse becomes aware of his investigation and tries to shake him off.

We have a long noir-ish scene where Ballard tries to get information from an undercover agent, Keene — and we don't realize until later that Keene is really Victor, one of the Dollhouse's "Actives." He's just been programmed to think he's an undercover FBI agent, to throw Ballard off the scent. When that doesn't work, and Ballard gets hold of a photo of Echo, Keene/Victor feeds him some information that leads him to a meeting with Echo herself. (We showed a clip from that scene a while back.)

Echo tells Ballard she's looking for her missing sister, and she needs Ballard's help. Ballard seems to buy it at first, but it's too good to be true, an actual lead in his stalled case after so long. He's all like, We're a team now, and they share a tender moment — until Ballard pulls a gun on her and accuses her of telling him what he wants to hear.

Then Echo gets the gun away from him and puts two bullets in his chest, and we realize she hasn't just been programmed to think she's looking for a missing sister. She hasn't even just been programmed to deal with Ballard. She's been programmed to be a psychopath, which she proves later by trying to go into the hospital and finish Ballard off.

Echo gets lots of great moments in the second episode, too, including an early sequence where she sits by the bedside of a "nineteen year old alkie" who's detoxing after drinking a bottle of vodka and a ton of percocet. (It's this "pro bono" good deed that seems to start Echo remembering stuff when she's supposed to be empty and mind-wiped.) We go straight from Echo talking to Danika, the nineteen-year-old girl, about staying sober, to a scene where she's at a wedding, drinking champagne and dancing with the bride's ex-boyfriend, whom she's crazy in love with. (I mistakenly thought this scene was from the new pilot, in my writeup a couple of weeks ago, because that page got mixed in with the new script pages.) We see her being a Latina gangster for another client, who's having some trouble with a local gang. We also get some hints about her backstory, including the fact that she has a visible reaction when Ballard asks her if her real name is Caroline.

Other characters also get some cool moments, including Boyd, the "Actives"' handler, and Topher, who programs them. They worry about the fact that Echo and two other "Actives" are starting to herd together during their supposedly blank periods. We learn that Boyd is suffering pangs of conscience over the idea that the mind-erased "Actives" are still people. Topher says it's just like Boyd's tie: it doesn't keep Boyd warm, but Boyd wears it anyway. We're all programmed, but at least the Actives get to have an awesome range of experiences. And morality is programming as well. At one point, Topher calls Boyd "man-friend," and Boyd says not to call him that. "We're not friends?" Topher says. "We're not men," Boyd responds. We also get some awesome scenes with the Dollhouse's head, Adelle Dewitt, and the doctor who looks after them, Claire Saunders.

All in all, when the first two episodes of Dollhouse air, they'll be like an introduction to this fantastically off-the-wall concept, followed by a whirlwind tour through all of the bizarre and creepy possibilities it opens up. Anybody who watches both episodes will be a Dollhouse fan for life. [Thanks to The Ugly for the script]

I wish there weren't those reaction shots of the guy making fun of Buzz, though — yeah, the dude is kind of a nut, but he's a visionary nut who isn't entirely off the mark. I'm still down with the Buzz program, though I'd like to establish a socialist orgy camp on the moon instead of giving it to entrepreneurs.

Buzz Aldrin: Take Us to Space [BoingBoingTV]

[via Twitch]

Sleeper, created by Ed Brubaker - the man who killed Captain America and replaced him with a cyborg assassin - and Marvel Zombies' Sean Philips in 2003, centers around Holden Carver, a secret agent whose run-in with an alien artifact leaves him with superpowers including invulnerability... which, according to the government, makes him a perfect candidate to go undercover in a secret society of supervillains because, well, what could they really do to him if he got caught?

The movie version - rumored for years, despite complicated rights issues - is being helped by Cruise's "loose attachment" to the project, according to the Hollywood Reporter:

Together with Sam Raimi, he is setting up "Sleeper" at Warner Bros. Cruise is loosely attached to star in the adaptation of the DC Comics/Wildstorm comic that Raimi would produce with his Star Road Entertainment partner Josh Donen... Raimi and Donen have long been fans of the book, and the project could have found homes at Sony and Regency if [the rights] issues hadn't been so complex. "Sleeper" is a spin-off book from Wildstorm flagship title "WildC.A.T.s" and features characters from another spin-off book, "Gen 13." Both books had been set up at different places around town and some of those deals were made before DC bought the imprint in 1999.

No writer is attached to the project yet.

Tom Cruise wakes up 'Sleeper' [Hollywood Reporter]

Buckell writes, in part:

[In his presentation,] Geoff [gives] us the rundown on Venus and what planned missions to Venus are going to look like, or may look like if they’re approved. Then he suddenly reminds us all about Venus’s basic properties. It’s hot. Crazy hot. The pressure is off the chain. It rains frickin’ sulfuric acid! There’s no air.

Then Geoff says, all that aside, Venus is probably the second most habitable planet in the solar system.

Say what? I’m intrigued, as Geoff goes on to explain that if you go high enough up into Venus’s atmosphere, the pressure is standard, the heat normal, you’re above the sulfuric acid-raining clouds, and then tells us that there, normal breathable Earth air is a lifting gas. So if you were to, say, enclose a mile-wide structure in a bubble, and fill that with normal breathable air, it would float.

In other words, you get a scientific justification for Cloud City. As long as it’s a giant floating marble.

Hell yes. And then maybe could you fill the floating marble with radio-controlled zombies, please? And like fight them? Yes, you could.

The Big Idea: Tobias Buckell [via Whatever]

Marvel Comics have their lightest week in quite some time, which clears the way for Amazing Spider-Man #568, the first part of the six-issue "New Ways To Die" storyline that brings Venom back into Spider-Man's world, as well as introducing the potentially-awesome, potentially-disastrous new character "Anti-Venom" to the world. If any Spider-fans need more reason to pick it up, what if I tell you that it also returns Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, to his rightful place as Spider-villain? Exactly.
DC Comics have two great launches to compete against any number of webheaded bad guys, however; Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds sees uber-writer Geoff Johns and uber-artist George Perez team up to smash three different versions of the 31st century together and see what survives, while G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker's Air offers up a heady mix of technology, terrorism and spirituality in a story that starts with a flight attendant who's afraid of flying and ends up somewhere off any map you've ever seen.

If those two books don't tickle your fancy (and if not, then for shame: they're the two I'm most looking forward to this week), then IDW and Dark Horse have you covered: Doctor Who: The Forgotten is due in stores tomorrow, launching IDW's "All of the Doctors, ever" mini-series with story by Tony Lee and art by Y: The Last Man's Pia Guerra. More excitingly, though, Dark Horse has Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a graphic novel based upon the upcoming video game (and written by the game's writer , Haden Blackman); you can find a seven-page preview of the book here, if you're not convinced, but for those of you who may be craving a less cartoony take on George Lucas' legacy, this is for you.

By this point, you know what comes next: A full list of this week's books can be found here, which you can use to build your very own shopping list that you can take to your very own local comic store... which you can locate by going here. Use those powers wisely, my friends, and remember: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering, and suffering leads to you realizing how much you need something like The Force Unleashed to remind you why you liked Star Wars the first time around.

Fox is seeking an injunction to stop the March release of Warners' Watchmen movie, and they've managed to find the most sympathetic judge in L.A., Lawrence Feess. In a nutshell, Fox argues that Warners obtained movie rights from producer Lawrence Gordon, but Fox already owned the rights to distribute any movie made by Gordon. In a similar case involving the Dukes movie, Judge Feess granted a preliminary injunction preventing Warners from releasing the film.

But in the Hazzard case, Warner Bros. agreed to pay the plaintiffs at least $17.5 million to settle their claims, and the movie came out as planned. (In retrospect, Warners may regret that settlement, considering how badly Dukes did.) It seems likely that Fox is simply lining up for a payout, and Watchmen will come out on time — but it'll simply be even more expensive than Warner Bros. already bargained on. Watchmen Babies image from Time.com. [New York Times]

[Variety]

The first Proton was launched in 1965. It was originally designed as one huge freaking Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, with a massive range and terrifying nuclear payload. Since the East coast of the U.S. is not currently a smoking radioactive crater, you can be sure it was never actually used this way. Instead, it was put to work hauling satellites into orbit, as well as chunks of the Mir space station. Despite some recent mission failures, Protons are still regularly contracted out by international companies who need to get something heavy into space. In this case, British company Inmarsat hired a Proton to put their 6-ton Inmarsat-4 (I4-F3) telecommunications satellite into orbit. By the time you read this, we'll know if it was deployed successfully.

This photo by Flickr user alexpgp shows a Proton being lifted into launch position at Baikonur.
If you head over to his Baikonur Campaigns page, you can see a huge gallery of cool insider photos taken inside Baikonur as engineers prepare for various launch missions (apparently alexpgp is an engineer with one of the companies that hires Proton rockets). Top image by: BBC News.

Proton rocket in return to flight. [BBC News]

[Not A Fishing Lure via Newsarama]

A new program starting up at Swansea and Cork Universities called EcoJel will devote over half a million pounds to the study of the jellyfish invasion. The (literally) brainless creatures will be tagged so their migration patterns and preferred environments can be tracked. And researchers will also look at the impact the wiggly Cnidiarians have on coastal ecosystems. Very little is known about jellyfish, so the scientists view this as an opportunity to learn as much as they can. Or a chance to eat a tasty new sea-going treat.

Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones suggested:

[The jellyfish] could provide an eco-tourist attraction for recreational divers. The project will also explore the potential of harvesting jellyfish in a sustainable way for food to export to Asian markets.

That's the spirit: Climate change is an opportunity, not a disaster! We can all start eating more jellyfish, or going on tours to see them.

EcoJel [Swansea University via TreeHugger]

Khoury talked to the true stars of the movie - amongst them, Topol, Brian Blessed and Queen's Brian May, who explained how the classic theme music was created:

So for the title track I wanted to portray the cartoon-like quality that I saw in it… but the ‘soaring guitars’ were just the normal vocabulary of my dreams!

Goddammit, I really want to dream like Brian May now. Blessed is just as helpful in the amazing quote department:

And it [the set] was full of dwarfs and all kinds of people. I love dwarfs. They’re the happiest people in the world. And I loved to chase them around the set and stuff like that. So the whole thing was colossal fun.

Even Topol offers up this helpful recollection:

Yeah, it was a fun movie to do it. And the main thing, I quit smoking on that film. [laughs]

Despite the somewhat scattered nostalgia of those involved, the article is actually remarkably fun and full of information about the movie and just why we never saw a Flash 2. It's still not too late, of course...

Hail Flash Gordon! [Comic Book Resources]

[IMDB]

The image above is of a ferrosilicon factory in Xining, China. Below is a piece of large public art that was on display in Hemlington, England.

Top two images via Patrick Landmann/Getty. Bottom art image via Oobject (where they have a ton of images of molten steel), with thanks to David for the tip.

What I find truly funny is listening to Kim Kardashian say "curve the bullet" like she has no clue what she's talking about. She might as well be speaking in Chinese, for the amount of sense she puts into that line. Same goes for Electra.

Disaster Movie is in theaters August 29.

The solicitation reads,

In anticipation of next year’s blockbuster new movie Push, comes this action-packed prequel miniseries! A secret war is about to begin, fought on battlefields obscured in shadow . . . and the weapons in this new conflict will be the human mind! The United States government set up the ultra-secret Division to fight this war and take the forefront in this unique arms race. Enter agent Ezra Lowe, an operative in the Division trained from an early age in psychic warfare, until one mission went horribly wrong...

From writers Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman (THE HIGHWAYMEN, Genius) and newcomer Bruno Redondo comes a brutal tale in the first chapter of a secret war!

The first issue hits stores on November 12th, with the second arriving two weeks later. Although the image accompanying the official soliciation is a generic placeholder, Jock's artwork for the first issue, above, premiered on the Standard Attrition blog.

Push #1 (of 6) [DC Comics]

According to X-Files writer and producer Spotnitz's blog, "the rumor is false. The Internet report you read is completely made up."

Good for you for coming out and addressing the sensation an X-Files DVD made, but honestly I don't know if direct to DVD would be that terrible of a turn for the X-Files. There's a big enough fan base that they could turn a profit, and those are the only people who are going to do to the theater to watch the movie anyways.

Dread Central got the scoop that the new X-Files movie will settle for minimal embarrassment by eking out a direct-to-DVD release. A tipster told the horror site:

"I understand - there was room for improvement ... and there still might be. I work for Screaming Death Monkey and Spotnitz - the TERRIFIC Frank Spotnitz - told us this week that the team have already spoken about the next X-Files film. It's likely the next release will go direct to DVD - but they're working on the assumption they'll have a similar budget."

The similar budget? That's not saying too much for me since most of the shots were in the snow. Perhaps they could actually focus on making the third film actually scary, and less midlife-crisis-angst ridden. I say go crazy and dump the budget into aliens. Blow The Day The Earth Stood Still remake out of the water with your own UFO that would make Close Encounters blush.

But unfortunately Dread seems to think that the plot will be focused on the end-of-days story line. According to them, the 2012 Mayan time line has also been discussed. Boo, what the world needs now is Cancer Man and aliens.

[Dread Central]

While I commend this idea, let's be honest with ourselves: This is a long book, with not a lot of action. This is a story that teaches you about being the end of possibilities, facing nothingness. While I completely believe Bale is reading McCarthy's work, that's big load to take on in the middle of an intense action movie shoot. But McG did give MTV pretty good reasons for pushing The Road on his cast and crew:

“I gave all the actors ‘The Road’ to read to get their heads right bout this sort of existential detachment that living in a post apocalyptic world would bring,” McG revealed. “We’re in a very large post apocalyptic environment. The bombs have gone off and there’s very little left. People are wandering through lonely landscapes. We want to capture that by way of David Lean photographic expanses, so you think you’re looking at ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ So far, so good.”

At least McG is putting on his serious director hat for this movie. It sounds like a great idea, but I worry that they aren't stretching themselves too thin. The line-up of Terminator 4 influences is long I've heard Aliens, Nolan's Batman and now Cormac McCarthy, that's a lot spice my friends. Let's not forget why we're all going to see this movie. To watch robots kill people, and vice versa.

[MTV]