10 Movies from 2015 That I Could Take or Leave

21. Aloha



There's a lot of pressure on Cameron Crowe to make great films and this is not a great film. It's reaching for something that it can't get hold of. But what it does manage to grasp, it does really well. It's a great-looking movie with characters I liked a lot and some intriguing moral dilemmas.

22. Furious 7



I'm a big fan of these of movies and that hasn't changed with this one. Still has lots of what I love about this series: tough people, awesome stunts, and a ton of heart. But the plot is thinner this time (and they're always pretty thin), so that and the bittersweetness around Paul Walker's death bring it down for me. It's an amazing technical achievement though in terms of stunts and filling in scenes that Walker hadn't been in. A solid entry in the series, but not one of the best.

23. Kingsman: The Secret Service



X-Men: First Class always makes me forget that Matthew Vaughn is also the director behind Kick-Ass. And everything that turns me off about Kick-Ass is a problem for me in Kingsman as well. I'd put all the blame on Mark Millar, but I like Wanted, so I think it's the combination of Millar and Vaughn. They're both thrilled/intrigued/whatever by hyper-violence and just being really super explicit. I'm not, so including that in an otherwise cool story about dapper spies is a big drawback for me.

24. Terminator: Genisys



I didn't even want to give this a chance. I'd written off the Terminator franchise as something I'm no longer interested in. I mean, I don't use the word "franchise" very often when I'm talking about a movie series. I much prefer to think in terms of continuing story, and "franchise" sounds so business-y. But that's exactly what the Terminator movies have become, with the rights-holders leasing out the property to anyone who wants to reboot it and try to make some more money.

David was really curious about this one though and it became an excuse to show him the first two. So we went and it was surprisingly watchable. I have many problems with the story and both Jason Clarke and Jai Courtney are boring, but Emilia Clarke is an awesome substitute for Linda Hamilton and Schwarzenegger is at the absolute top of his game. I loved both of their characters and the relationship between them.

25. The DUFF



The title is horrible and I was afraid that the movie would be, too. It's a lot of fun, actually, with a nice message about being comfortable in your own skin. Not quite on the level with Easy A, Ten Things I Hate About You, or the best John Hughes movies, but a solid high school comedy. I might even rank it higher after another viewing or two.

26. The Hateful Eight



Great idea. Killer cast. Pretty to look at. Fantastic score by Ennio Morricone. And I was intrigued by the building of the mystery.

But it could've been 45 minutes shorter without losing anything of the story. There's too much dialogue that I don't care about and too many long, sweeping shots of countryside. It's gorgeous countryside, but an hour into the movie, I was ready to get on with things. I was also disappointed in the solution to the mystery, but at least there's no room for boredom as that's unfolding.

I saw the shorter cut without the intermission and ironically, I think the longer version may have helped some of my issues. More specifically, having the intermission as a palate cleanser may have helped. Would like to try it that way and find out.

27. While We’re Young



I like the ideas in While We're Young. Transitioning into maturity is a weird process that deserves some exploration. Very few people actually feel mature. Instead, we think of ourselves as younger than we are, so it can be startling to confront the reality and challenging to ease into the mindset that growing older doesn't mean not having fun anymore.

All of that is cool and While We're Young touches on it, but then it gets distracted by a theme it's way more interested in: the importance of veracity in documentary film-making. Which is also thought-provoking, but not what I signed up for. Still, great cast and it was this movie that made me realize I'm an Adam Driver fan.

28. Jupiter Ascending



So ambitious and so cool. Doesn't deserve the John Carter-level derision it got (but then, neither did John Carter). Sadly, though it's fun, it's not great. As in, I totally would have paid money for sequels, but it's not that big a deal to me that there won't be any.

29. Focus



I suffer enough Will Smith Fatigue that I wasn't going to watch this one at all. The trailer made it seem very serious and all about whether untrustworthy people can trust each other, so yawn. But then I heard some positive reviews about how it's really just a fun heist movie and I'm always up for that. And it is a really fun heist movie. A mediocre one, but enjoyable and at least it's not dour.

30. Mortdecai



I thought this might be interesting to watch after re-visiting the Pink Panther movies this year. Johnny Depp's cartoon mode has grown tiresome in the last few years, but he's doing it less in Mortdecai (meaning that you can glimpse a human being under all those mannerisms) and his supporting cast (Ewan McGregor, Gwyneth Paltrow, and especially Paul Bettany) are doing great, comedic work. Jeff Goldblum has a fun role, too. All that plus an entertaining caper plot and the whole experience was much more than I hoped for.

7 Days in May | Terminate the Fugitive

The Terminator (1984)



I don't have any special interest in Terminator Genisys, but it does remind me that David hasn't seen any of the Terminator movies yet and is old enough. So we watched the first couple.

The first one is still my favorite. It's such a small movie in many ways, from the relative obscurity of its cast to its perfectly cyclical and self-contained little plot. It's just a brilliant scifi horror/thriller awesomely executed.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)



I don't like Judgment Day as much, primarily because this is where the story starts to get sloppy. It opens a nasty can of worms to have the future machines be able to send back Terminators to various points in the timeline, basically getting a do-over whenever they fail. That means that the humans can never completely win, which is good for keeping the franchise going, but bad for viewers hoping for any kind of closure.

However... That being said, T2 does a great job of cleaning up after itself. In The Terminator, all the good guys wanted was to protect the version of the future in which they were able to defeat the machines. In T2, they're able to actually stop the machines from taking over to begin with. And with some great character development for Sarah Connor, a touching story between John and his robot friend, and huge action set pieces that the original couldn't afford. It works really well and I can see why so many people call it their favorite.

The only thing I don't like about it is the way it leaves the door unlocked for endless sequels. I enjoy Rise of the Machines and even Salvation well enough as movies (in fact, I like Salvation a little better than Rise of the Machines), but the timeline gets so convoluted after Judgment Day that I get bored with trying to keep track. Which goes back to my lack of interest in Genisys. I'll probably end up catching it on Netflix one day, but as far as my head canon goes, the series is only two movies long.

The Fugitive (1993)



There's an episode or four of Clone Wars late in Season 5 that are a direct homage to The Fugitive. I'd been wanting David to see it for a while anyway, because I've been itching to share Wrongfully Accused with him, so this was a good excuse. It's still a great mystery/thriller and Tommy Lee Jones still steals the show. One of the best of Harrison Ford's movies from the '90s and he made a bunch of great ones.

A couple of surprises this time: I'd built up Julianne Moore's role in my head as being much bigger than it is, and I was tickled to recognize Jane Lynch in an early role as one of Richard Kimble's doctor friends.

Wrongfully Accused (1998)



One of my favorite Leslie Nielsen comedies. I usually call it my favorite, but I need to see Airplane! and Naked Gun again. Wrongfully Accused relies more heavily on pop culture references than those movies, so the jokes aren't as original, but man it makes me laugh. I have to stop the movie every single time I get to the scene with the out-of-control lowrider so I can catch my breath and wipe tears from my eyes. And the whole scene in the bait shop with John Walsh from America's Most Wanted and Maury Hannigan from Real Stories of the Highway Patrol is especially full of great gags.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)



Finally, the Marvel rewatch continues. There's a lot that I love about The Dark World, but my main reason for doing this is to track the development of the Infinity Stones story and this is where it starts to ramp up. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is where the term "Infinity Stones" is mentioned for the first time. We also get to see the third Stone so far. The Tesseract contains the Space Stone and - while it hadn't yet been revealed at this point - Loki's staff contains the Mind Stone. Malekith's amorphous Aether is somehow also a Stone, though if we get to see how it takes solid form, I missed it. It looks like it's just being contained in a special box when Sif turns it over to the Collector for safe keeping.

I also don't think it's been revealed in the movies which Stone the Aether is, but consensus seems to be that it's the Reality Stone. In the comics, that one has the power to bend the laws of physics to the user's will, so that fits with the weird gravitational stuff we see in Dark World. I'm sure it'll become clearer as we go.

The LXB adds to my list of favorite films

I'm going to take the week off from the LXB (I'm unqualified to talk about reality TV treasure hunters), but won't let that keep me from pointing out that last week's Top Ten Movies assignment was super popular and successful.

I especially love the themed lists that three of the members came up with, so I'll list those first.

• Top Ten Monkey Movies [Cool and Collected]
• Top Ten Time Travel Movies [Cavalcade of Awesome]
• Top Ten Vincent Price Movies [AEIOU and Sometimes Why]

But, as predicted, there were lots of movies that could easily have gone on my own list.

• Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Summer School, Back to the Future, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off [Flashlights Are Something to Eat]
• Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Monty Python and the Holy Grail [Life With Fandom]
• Can't Buy Me Love and The Avengers (I debated including The Avengers on my list, but decided I needed some distance from it to give it an objective ranking. I'm glad to see not everyone was that shy, because my feeling is that it deserves to be there.) [Random Toy Reviews]
• Terminator, Die Hard, and First Blood [Movie Hodge Podge]
• This is Spinal Tap [That Figures, who gets bonus points for also picking Night of the Demon.]
• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Aliens, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Batman (1966) [My pal Erik Johnson]
• The Crow [Jason Vorhees]
• Lean On Me [Team Hellions]

Some of those were picked by multiple bloggers, so I linked to the one I saw first. Seriously, the LXB roll call on this one is full of great films, so if you're looking to kill some time, you should check them all out.

LXB | March Madness: James Bond vs John Connor

For the first three weeks of March, we're going to answer the question, one match at a time, of who would win if 12 movie tough guys were airdropped into an abandoned city and only one could escape.

That's not exactly a fair photo match-up, but it accurately illustrates the outcome of this fight regardless of which versions of the characters we're talking about. If we match toughest with toughest, Daniel Craig still beats Christian Bale. And at their weakest: Roger Moore takes Edward Furlong.

I suppose we could get goofy and make Woody Allen the weakest Bond, but then we're going to have to allow Fetus John Connor from the first Terminator and I think even Woody Allen might be able to take him. The only way this works in Connor's favor is to let Christian Bale fight Woody Allen.

Unless we allow gadgets and count the T-800. I reckon Arnold Schwarzenegger trumps a wrist-mounted dart gun, but that seems outside the spirit of determining the toughest badass. Daniel Craig wins and for the purpose of the rest of this contest: he'll be our Bond.

Awesome List: Indyopoly, Hulkigami, Terminator stuff, Hobbit 2, Amazons are hot, and more

Indiana Jones makes Monopoly better



I'm usually really annoyed by all the different Monopoly versions that come out, but dang if I don't want this one. I think it's the wooden crate it comes in. And the Ark of the Covenant hotels.

Terminator Garbage

Okay, seriously... I had just cleaned up my Tivo Season Passes and decided that I wasn't going to stay with The Sarah Conner Chronicles on a weekly basis when it returns next Fall. I like a lot of it (Summer Glau, the intricate plot-weaving, John Conner's emergence as a hero, the humor), but there was enough that bugged me (John Conner's being in school, the convenient inconsistency in Cameron's ability to blend in, Sarah's tiring over-protectiveness) that I figured I'd just catch up when the DVDs came out.

But then they gotta go and put Shirley Manson in it. Well played, Sarah Conner people. Well played.

It's amazing what a few plants will do

And speaking of re-energizing my interest in Terminator, McG has released some concept art from the upcoming sequels. I was pretty bored with the idea of post-Judgment Day movies, but I realize now that my problem may have been with how dull the future's always looked in the movies so far. All the overgrown plant life still makes it look very desolate, but interesting. Like humans may have to deal with some nasty wildlife in addition to all those robots.

Coolest origami ever



Okay, it's not technically origami, but it's still making stuff out of paper and - outside of Edward James Olmos in Blade Runner and the dinosaur pop-up dioramas my son's been making lately - that's an activity that's always struggled for coolness. Until now. Lots more characters at that link and this one, including the Rocketeer, Indiana Jones, and Hellboy.

London 1888



Part board game, part RPG, part card game. In Victorian England hunting Jack the Ripper. I'm so getting this when it's translated to English. (Thanks, Brass Goggles!)

"You expect me to link?"

I knew Snell from comics blog Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep!! was Awesome. I mean, the proof is right there in the blog name. But I didn't realize he was also a huge Bond fan, which pretty much breaks the scale I was using to measure Awesome with.

I Expect You to Die! is his project in reviewing every Bond movie ever made leading up to the release of Quantum of Solace, but he also talks about other Bond stuff that interests him. Things are already off to a great start with his review of the old Climax Mystery Theater version of Casino Royale. I've pretty much worn out my VHS copy of that one and I still learned stuff from Snell's post. Including that my copy is incomplete.

I've always thought it ended abruptly, but figured that was because of having to quickly wrap up the live production. It's more of a mystery than ever now why the commercial versions of the episode cut off the end, but at least Snell has the missing stuff for us to finally see.

Ultimate Alpha Flight



I've never read an Ultimate Marvel comic and don't really have any desire to, but I admit I'm a little intrigued by the Ultimate version of Aurora there. She was one of my favorite members of Alpha Flight and I hate that no one's doing anything with her. Of course, any interest in her is more than offset by how goofy the rest of the team looks. Why does Vindicator have lightbulbs on his arms? (Thanks to Weekly Crisis for the scan.)

Hobbit 2 could go either way

Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro have finally spilled some info about the Hobbit movie and its sequel. The Hobbit news is really positive:

No casting has commenced and won’t until the scripts are written. Guillermo insists that “Unequivocally, every single actor that originated a role in the trilogy will be asked to participate and reprise it. If health, availability or willingness become obstacles - and only in that case - recasting would be considered.” ... Ian Holm will be utilized “in some fashion for sure but the difficulty of the role will be better assessed after” the screenplays are completed. Del Toro revealed that he also has plans for Ron Perlman in the film, but not as the voice of Smaug.

Both movies will be PG-13 ... Howard Shore is in talks to return to compose the score. Much of the original production team will be brought back supplemented by choices from del Toro.

Middle-earth will be shot on location in New Zealand with real set construction preferred over green screen. They plan on rebuilding Hobbiton “bigger and even better” in the same location.

Unfortunately, the sequel won't be the second half of the original book, but a fanfic story. Del Toro says, "We must try and contain The Hobbit in a single film," but I suppose if I've got to watch a fanfic story, Jackson and Del Toro's is the one I'd want to watch.

Del Toro says, “The idea is to find a compelling way to join The Hobbit and Fellowship and enhance the five films both visually and in their Cosmology. There are omissions and material enough in the available, licensed material to attempt this. The agreement is, however, that the second film must be relevant and emotionally strong enough to be brought to life...”

Jackson says, “If we wished to write one of the LOTR characters into the narrative of Film Two, we would only do that with that actors blessing, and willingness to take part. Otherwise we’d take the writing in another direction.”

This just in: Amazons are hot



I love this post on female bodies and popular culture. If my fascination with Wonder Woman isn't clue enough, I'll just say outright that I'm especially attracted to women who look like they could kick my butt. So, out of the images that Kali posted there's absolutely no contest between the Amazon superheroines and the ultra-tiny supermodels they're next to. I blame Lucy Lawless for ruining me on unhealthy-looking girls.

Adventureblog Theater: More Swedes

T2



Predator



Star Wars



Blade Runner



Back to the Future



Jurassic Park



Tron

Awesome List Catch-Up: Part Four

Who is The Nobody?



Jeff Lemire is making a graphic novel based on H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man.

Black Panther cartoon sounds good

Yesterday I said, "If the cartoon is anything like the early issues, I'll be all over it." Looks like I will.

Wonder Woman movies update

Doesn't look like we'll be seeing Wonder Woman on the big screen any time soon. The Justice League movie has been tabled.

And while producer Joel Silver still wants to do a Wonder Woman solo film, he's still trying to figure out the best direction to approach it from. Take your time, Joel. I'd rather see it done right than done soon.

Femme Noir



I reviewed the first couple of issues of Christopher Mills and Joe Staton's Femme Noir.

Sarah Conner Chronicles Season Two

There'll be one. I'm just now getting around to watching Season One on TiVo, so I don't know how to feel about this yet. I have reservations about the pilot (the only episode I've seen so far), but I hear from pretty much everyone that it gets better.

Josh Medors Benefit Auction

It's not awesome that Josh Medors -- who illustrated the short prose story I wrote in Tales from the Inner Sanctum #1 (in addition to many other, more high profile things like G.I. Joe and Fused!) -- has cancer. It is awesome that there will be an auction at Emerald City Comic Con to help pay for Josh's medical expenses.

Get well, buddy.

Why Gail Simone's Wonder Woman will just keep getting better and better until the world cannot contain its Awesomeness and explodes

We're all doomed, but at least we'll go out with great Wonder Woman stories.

Del Toro does The Hobbit

The man likes his fantasy. I think this is good news, but I feel like I know exactly what to expect. Hopefully he'll do some surprising things with it.

New Dark Knight poster



I don't know why I'm not more excited about this one. I want to see it, naturally, but I'm not anxious about it. I probably will be once we get past Iron Man.

Still. Very cool poster.

Awesome anthology

I reviewed Indie Spinner Rack's Awesome anthology. Among other things it includes: a robot with a fishbowl for a head, a Mexican necrophiliac robot, a couple of talking bears, ice-cream eating aliens (one of whom has a pet flying ball named Greg; the other of whom has a gun that shoot dragons out of it), some enchanted deer, Scuba Archeologist, Frankenstein vs. Popeye, an alien visitation, and one of the scariest comics I've ever read (the scariest I've ever read involving talking geese).

Still more Crystal Skull pictures

This crop is more exciting than the last batch. Even more at the link.

Possible SPOILERS BELOW in some of them, I guess. This is the last item in this post, so you can stop reading now if you don't want to see.

Quick Reviews: Doomsday; The Bank Job; Lust, Caution; Nim's Island; Terminator 3

Got a bit of a backlog of movies I’ve been meaning to talk about, so here are some quick reviews.

Doomsday



Almost awesome. It had all the right influences (Road Warrior, Escape from New York, and the medieval movie of your choice) and filtered them through the story of a booty-kickin’ Action Girl with a soundtrack that includes Adam Ant, Fine Young Cannibals, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Any movie that uses Frankie’s “Two Tribes Go to War” as the background music to a Road Warrior-style chase scene immediately rules.

Unfortunately, the medieval movie that the filmmakers were influenced by appears to be Flesh + Blood. The violence and gore is over the top, but in a bad way. There’s zero restraint and that doesn’t work for the movie. For instance, one of the bad guys is a gang leader named Solomon. He’s depicted part of the time as a fun, charming villain, but then he goes and does absolutely despicable things that we get to see in graphic detail. That might be a cool, nuanced approach for a drama, but not an adventure movie like this.

Four out of five Frankies.

The Bank Job



Not really what I was expecting. It’s a spy movie disguised as a caper movie and the caper part works pretty well, but the spies are pretty much idiots, so I didn’t enjoy that bit. I haven’t researched the real-life events that it’s based on, but I suspect that the spy angle is speculation based on conspiracy theory. And kind of dumb conspiracy theory at that.

If the British government wanted to retrieve potentially damaging photographs from a bank safe deposit box, surely there are better, easier ways to go about it than covertly hiring a bunch of local crooks to break in and do it for them. The unknown, uncontrollable variables the spies had to accept to even consider the mission are infinite. In fact, there’s not a single element that the spies do control during the whole film.

The caper part of it works though because the crooks are pretty charming. Especially, naturally, Jason Statham. But they’re none of them so charming that I wanted to see them get away with robbing people’s safe deposit boxes. This isn’t insured bank money we’re talking about. It’s people’s jewelry and passports and birth certificates. Yeah, some crooked people banked there (in fact, in a hard-to-believe coincidence, apparently all of London’s slimy underground banked there), but I couldn’t forget that the thieves were stealing from real people and unlike in a good caper movie, I wanted to see them all caught.

Two out of five secret tunnels.

Lust, Caution



I was hoping this would be an awesome spy story set in WWII, Japanese-occupied China. And it is a spy story; just not an awesome one. It’s about a young, Chinese girl who joins the Chinese resistance when Japan invades. She and her other college chums come up with a scheme to assassinate a high-level Chinese official who’s working with the Japanese to oppress the Chinese people. The scheme involves our heroine’s seducing the official so that she can lure him into a trap where her friends will kill him. Unfortunately, the official is a very careful man and difficult to snare. So she has to keep working on him - keep seducing him - until he slips up.

The movie’s title comes from the focus on the obvious sexual tension between the girl and the official, and how that’s in conflict with his paranoid, extremely cautious nature. And that’s the movie’s primary concern. Where The Bank Job is a bad spy movie pretending to be an okay caper film, Lust, Caution is a powerful, but twisted love story masquerading as a fairly decent spy flick. As long as you know that’s what you’re in for, you should do fine. I didn’t, so I had to adjust on the fly. Sort of like what I had to do with Ang Lee’s Hulk. I can appreciate it for what it is in hindsight, but I still really wish it was more like what I’d hoped for.

Four out of five clandestine meetings in coffee shops.

Nim’s Island



Jodie Foster + island adventure + Gerard Butler in dual roles (both of which are handsome adventurers) + fantastic story about love, promises, and bravery + bearded dragon = Freaking. Awesome.

Five out of five Alex Rovers.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines



I avoided this in the theater for two reasons. The lesser of the two was that it didn’t have Sarah Conner in it and I’d fallen for her in T2. I didn’t know how much I’d enjoy a Terminator movie without her.

The bigger reason though was that it didn’t have James Cameron in it either and without his vision to guide it, I was afraid that it would lead the franchise down the Highlander path. By which I mean that Highlander is a fan-freaking-tastic movie, but the sequels sucked because they abandoned the concept and continuity established by the first. “There can be only one,” indeed.

That’s what I was afraid would happen with the Terminator movies. Someone would come along and try to keep the series going, but would go too far and not only lose the feel of the first two, but ignore the careful, almost intricate continuity they’d set up.

Fortunately, to my surprise, T3 didn’t do that. It was a logical extension of what had come before. It was pretty brave in its ending, but that worked for me. It makes me want to see sequels, which is not at all the response I thought I’d have.

SPOILERS BELOW

Not that there aren’t problems. John Conner and his girlfriend walk into top secret military bases far too easily and the Schwarzenegger Terminator’s conflict about its programming was cheesy and horribly acted. I’ve seen Schwarzenegger do some good acting, but he wasn’t doing it here. There’s other silliness too, like how in the midst of nuclear Armageddon, US military leaders somehow instinctively turn to punk kid John Conner for comfort.

So, yes. Flawed, really pretty average action movie. But so much better than I thought it would be.

Three out of five naked Terminator women.

The Awesome List: Jungle Girls and Giant Apes, new Star Wars movie, Doctor Who, Hellboy, Lost news, Jericho comics, Terminator stuff, and more

Kala & Go–Go



I can't tell much about 5-Color Comics from their website, MySpace page, or even their mention in Rich Johnston's column, but I'm pretty sure that all I need to know is in that picture right there. Also, some damn fine comics creators are involved.

I'm going to start reading Iron Man comics

People keep telling me that before he was Marvel's greatest villain, Iron Man was the star of a pretty cool spy comic. I'm on the verge of checking that out for myself, but in the meantime, Matt Fraction's taking a stab at the character and I know he can write an awesome spy story.

Clone Wars cartoon to hit theaters before TV

And here's the trailer.

Doctor Who is Destro

The G.I. Joe movie just got a lot more interesting.

Speaking of Doctor Who

I was just wondering what Pia Guerra's next project after Y: The Last Man would be. I could hug IDW's Editor in Chief Chris Ryall right now.

Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis

The name pretty much speaks for itself, really.

Hellboy stuff



PVC characters, a mug, and action figures.

Lost plans

Carlton Cuse talks about how the rest of the season will go now that the strike's over:

"Damon [Lindelof] and I are going to try to make five more episodes before the end of May, which is ambitious. But we've found ourselves in a situation where we had eight episodes of story planned, and we're going to try to fit that into five hours of the show. Even though it's going to be very hard to execute, we felt like any less would be doing a disservice to the story we had planned. We really want to give the fans the best possible experience and ending... to Season 4."

Much, much more at the link.

Also, those five episodes will air after new episodes of Grey's Anatomy, meaning that ABC now totally owns Thursday night.

Jericho graphic novel

I must be living right or something.

Terminator 4

I've been ignoring news about new Terminator movies, because frankly I lost interest in the franchise when Linda Hamilton stopped being part of it. But... I wanna check out The Sarah Conner Chronicles and before I watch my TiVoed episodes I want to rewatch the movies. I'm also going to finally see T3, which I've never seen before, but have been told is sort of necessary viewing before watching the TV show.

I say all that to say that now that I'm immersing myself in that world again, I'm interested in the new movie sequels, especially with Christian Bale playing John Conner in them.

The Awesome List: Indiana Jones, Giant Monsters, Albert Einstein’s secret doomsday device, and the Return of TV

Indy's hat and jacket

IndianaJones.com has a new featurette about Indy's iconic look and trying to recreate it for the new movie.

Indy's trailer

Apparently, the teaser trailer for Indy and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be attached to The Spiderwick Chronicles when it hits theaters on Thursday. I also saw something on IndianaJones.com earlier today about the trailer's TV and 'net debuts, but I can't find it now. Either I've gone stupid (entirely possible) or the info was released prematurely or is being changed. I'll let you know which once I know.

Giant Robots are stupid.

According to TechRepublic.

Oh, wait. No, they're not.

Says Jeremiah Tolbert.

Three Days to Never

According to Bookgasm, Tim Powers' Three Days to Never contains all of my favorite things: "hidden histories ... spirits, spies, talking disembodied heads, dybbuks, time travel, Charlie Chaplin’s quest for magical power, Albert Einstein’s secret doomsday device, and about a million other awesome things." So totally sold.

Welcome back, TV.

With the WGA strike all but officially over, TV Guide has a new strike chart up predicting when we'll start seeing new episodes of our favorite shows. Here are the ones that interest me:

Battlestar Galactica: Returns April 4 with first half of 20-episode final season. Production on second half could start as early as March. Airdate for those TBD.

The Big Bang Theory: Expected to shoot 5 to 7 new episodes to air in April/May.

Burn Notice: Production on Season 2 expected to get underway in late April. New episodes could start airing as early as July.

Chuck: No new episodes until fall.

Grey's Anatomy: Expected to shoot 4 to 7 new episodes to air in April/May

House: Expected to shoot 4 to 6 new episodes to air in April/May.

Jericho: Seven episodes remain. No additional episodes expected for this season.

Lost: Six pre-strike episodes remain. Six additional episodes could air this season.

Men in Trees: Eleven pre-strike episodes remain. No additional episodes expected this season.

The Office: Expected to shoot 5 to 10 new episodes to air in April/May.

Private Practice: Slim chance it could return with 4 or 5 new episodes this season. Either way, it'll be back in the fall.

Pushing Daisies: No new episodes until fall.

Scrubs: Four pre-strike episodes remain. Four additional episodes will likely be shot; unclear whether they'll air on NBC or go straight to DVD.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Five pre-strike episodes remain. Future beyond that TBD.

Link: Jericho to get closure, Eli Stone looks really funny, and I gotta read The Cage

Mystery

• Taking the sting out of Jericho's cancellation, Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment, responded to huge fan outcry by saying, "Thank you for supporting Jericho with such passion. We truly appreciate the commitment you made to the series and we are humbled by your disappointment. In the coming weeks, we hope to develop a way to provide closure to the compelling drama that was the Jericho story." No word on if that means a mini-series, a TV movie, or something else, but it's cause for hope.

Fantasy

• I'm trying not to comment on any of the promised Fall TV shows yet, because I'm still not over some of my favorites getting cancelled this season and I'm certainly not ready to start welcoming in their replacements. But I've mentioned before that I'm curious to see Victor Garber's new show, Eli Stone. Even though the premise didn't immediately grab me, it's Victor Garber. His Jack Bristow from Alias is the one guy I'd put up against Jack Bauer and not immediately know which to bet on. But anyway, any hesitation I had about the premise is now completely gone thanks to this trailer. Oh, man, I can't wait to watch this show now.
• Jason Brannon's crytozoological thriller The Cage sounds really really good. Sort of like Day of the Animals meets The X-Files. "A Wendigo, Bigfoot, El Chupacabra, The Jersey Devil (think horned horse and awfully mean), The Dragon of Bone Island and a little somethin’ somethin’ called The Beast of Exmoor" attack a small, family zoo and everyone in it.
• I liked Pan's Labyrinth pretty well, but I don't think I'd consider buying it if the special edition didn't have "animated DVD comics (one-page stories with floating captions), beautifully illustrated by Guy Davis, Jason Shawn Alexander and Mike Kaluta, that provide interesting back stories to the mythical characters Ofelia encounters in the labyrinth: The Faun and Great Toad (Davis), Pan (Kaluta) and The Fairies (Alexander)."

Science Fiction

• This could also have gone under Superheroes, but I'll keep it here. I really liked DC's 52 series, but one of my regrets about it is that I wanted more Adam Strange, Starfire, Animal Man stories. DC read my mind and launches Countdown to Adventure this August.
• Lucasfilm has released a look at the art from its upcoming Clone Wars CGI series.
• My local theater had a showing of the first Terminator movie on the big screen last week. Seeing Linda Hamilton even as the whimpy version of Sarah Conner made me less excited about FOX's upcoming The Sarah Conner Chronicles, but maybe my prejudice will ease off between now and next January when Chronicles kicks off.

Superheroes

• If you read superhero comics at all, you're aware that Mary Jane Watson's first words to Peter Parker were, "Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot." But if you're like me, you don't know the context of where that line came from. I've been confused for years about why those would be the first words out of someone's mouth when she's meeting you for the first time. Fortunately, Comics Should Be Good helpfully recaps the story for us.
• Fox and the Franklin Mint have teamed up to release a limited edition Silver Surfer quarter to promote the new Fantastic Four movie.
• I gave up on Heroes about six episodes in and decided that if I was missing out, I could always catch up on DVD. Well, now the DVD is scheduled for release on August 28th and I'm still having a hard time mustering excitement for it. Some of my friends tell me that it got better as the season progressed, but I haven't yet read a thorough review that acknowledges the show's early flaws and explains how it corrected for them. I need convincing.

Other Comics

• The winners of this year's Glyph awards honoring black comics creators and characters have been announced. I'm definitely going to have to give Stagger Lee a read.

Writing is Hard

• Bestselling author Brad Meltzer shares some tips for getting published. Some of it's old news if you already read agents' blogs, but there's some good, new info too, like the caveat to Miss Snark's "Query widely" advice where Meltzer suggests you only query ten agents at a time in case you decide to rework your query letter after the first go-'round.
• Another good advice list. This one on developing effective writing habits.
• I suck at titles, so any source of ideas for them is welcome. I totally want to write a comic called Stab!

Links du Jour: Flash Gordon casting, Jungle Girl, and the Terminator franchise lives

Pirates

• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has been moved up a day to a Thursday night release.

Jungle Tales

• Dynamite Entertainment is starting a new comic series called Jungle Girl. I love the jungle hero genre, so I'll definitlely be giving it a look. My only apprehensions are that the Frank Cho cover they're showing a) has some wonky anatomy going on, and b) looks completely interchangeable with any of his covers on Marvel's Shanna the She Devil. Still, I liked Shanna and it's a jungle comic. And it has dinosaurs. Worth checking out.

Horror

• Skottie Young has posted unlettered pages on his site from his Monster of Frankenstein backup story in Legion of Monsters: Werewolf by Night. I'd somehow missed that this story existed, but I went out and bought it after seeing these pages.
• A Dutch producer has acquired the rights to the Hammer studio's library as well as the ability to produce new movies under the Hammer name. According to Sci Fi Wire, "the plan is to produce two to three horror movies or thrillers a year."

Fantasy

• Just noting that the title to this anthology is an oxymoron.
• The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced the winners of the Nebula Awards over the weekend.

Science Fiction

• The Sci Fi Channel has cast more actors for this summer's new Flash Gordon series. Gina Holden (Blood Ties, Final Destination 3) will play Dale Arden, Jody Racicot (also from both Blood Ties and Final Destination 3) will play Dr. Zarkoff, John Ralston (Life with Derek) will play Ming, and Anna Van Hooft (that one episode of CSI about the foot-fetishist fireman-impersonator and the reality crime show) will play Princess Aura.
• FOX has picked up The Sarah Conner Chronicles, which means that it'll be really good, but will only last six episodes. Also: NBC has picked up the Bionic Woman remake show.
• In other Terminator-related news, a new film development company has picked up the rights to the Terminator movies and plans to "quickly put together" a new trilogy sans Arnold Schwarzenegger. That just screams "quality," doesn't it?

Superheroes

• Chris's Invincible Super-Blog has infected me and now I'll also be hunting back issue bins for a copy of World's Finest #187. How can you not want to know what happens next? Thanks a lot, ISB.

Other Comics

• It's been a while since anyone has been crazy enough tried to introduce a whole, brand new superhero universe to the marketplace. Conventional wisdom is that only Marvel and DC can do the superhero universe thing successfully anymore. This latest go at it should be interesting to see.