By way of SciFi Cool comes word that Fringe has been renewed, as has Heroes. But no news about whether Chuck gets brought back for a third season yet.
The Fan Film The Hunt for Gollum premiered at SciFi London yesterday, and was posted online at the same time (in HD, no less). Besides the movie’s home page, you can find it at Daily Motion, which also hosts the Sci-Fi London TV archives. Author Walter Jon Williams has posted a fun video called Mutant Powers, explaining graphically why you don’t want them. He also found the exploding gummi bears video below. And the first trailer is out for District 9, another thinking-person’s sleeper hit in the making, along with Moon.
It looks like we have an entire summer of great Sci-Fi movies in front of us, but for the moment let’s just look at this month. For this weekend, to open, top of the list is X-Men Origins: Wolverine, another world-class entry from the Marvel Movie House team. Since they brought the film making in-house, the movies just keep getting better and better. Also out this week is Battle for Terra, a 3D animated SF story, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Next week, the primary film is Star Trek 11, and the week after that has nothing I have recognized so far (I can’t count the Dan Brown movie since he only wrote one book, over and over). But one more week after that we have two fun flicks, Terminator: Salvation and Night At The Museum: Smithsonian.
Eureka returns in July, something we tend to expect these days. But this time it comes in on Friday nights instead of Tuesdays, joining the strong tradition of ScfFi Friday shows like Battlestart Galactica, various Stargate incarnations, Doctor Who, Primeval, and more. It also coincides with their branding switch to SyFy, so all we need to round it out is the new Riverworld TV series they commissioned. While over at BBC America, Ashes to Ashes hits its season 1 finale tomorrow night, with season two kicking off the following Saturday. New episodes of Primeval and Torchwood are coming soon, as well as another original series,
In April of last year I commented on Dante 01, a French film that looked pretty interesting. If it made it to the movie theaters it snuck right past me. It is now out on DVD, available from Amazon or Blockbusters. The folks at SciFi Cool posted a trailer and a lot of stills, and it still looks interesting. Also at SciFi Cool, a very tasty video from Transformers 2 that was run at Showest. IGN posted a great trailer for Moon, a movie in the tradition of Silent Running and 2001, where the characters and concepts mean far more than the special effects (although those are there as well). Finally, Ron Perlman had a Chat with BloodyD about his upcoming venture as Bubba Nosferatu. There really are some quality science fiction films on the way!
After watching the Smashing Pumpkins Steampunk song yesterday, I had to track down the original 1902 French movie that inspired the video segment. Based on the 1865 story From The Earth To The Moon by Jules Verne, it was cutting-edge film making, with never-before seen special effects and production values. You can download the book to read on your computer or portable device, or read it online. You can also listen to the story online or download it for your portable media player (or burn it to CD) thanks to the good folks at Librivox. They remade the movie in 1958, but the original is the best. You can download your own copy for your permanent collection or just watch it online at Archive.Org.