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.
Getting ready to step out the door and hit X-Men Origins: Wolverine in an hour or two, which I have been looking forward to for a while. If I was anywhere near Michigan, though, I would be joining Elizabeth Bear, Wil Wheaton, John Scalzi, and over a thousand others at Penguicon 7.0. A three day Con celebrating Linux, free and open source software, and Science Fiction? Had I heard about this a few weeks ago I would have been there; thanks to GeekDad for the heads up!
On June 24th the 35th annual Saturn Awards will be handed out, and this time the lifetime achievement award goes to Leonard Nimoy. At a con in the UK last weekend Zach Levi (the Chuck of Chuck) led a Flashmob to Subway where he ended up making sandwiches for his fans. Much to the confusion of the local security folks, who thought it was the politest riot they had ever seen. Also from the UK comes Gratuitus Space Battles, a game who’s goal is to bring the over-the-top explodiness back into space games (their words). This one looks like a lot of fun.
By the title of this entry, you have probably guessed that MacLeod won the Clarke Award this year, for his book Song of Time. Pretty impressive, since his competition included Paul McAuley, Alastair Reynolds, Neal Stephenson, Sheri S. Tepper and Mark Wernham. The Clarke Award was presented last night at the Sci-Fi London 8 Film Festival, and presenting an award for a best book at a film festival is not as unusual as it sounds. This film fest has grown into one of the best SciFi Cons in the UK, and even has its own awards show for best short film made specifically for the event.