Torchwood's New Season To Air In The US In July

 

On of the really annoying things about being a fan of popular British TV shows like Doctor Who and Torchwood in the United States is that the BBC never airs new episodes of their shows here at the same time they do back in England.  Sure, BBC America will eventually air the new episodes, but it's typically months after they already aired in Britian.  Case in point, last year's Doctor Who Christmas Special that aired in the good old UK back in December still has not been aired for American audiences, and it's been five months!

 

Understanding that, you'll then see why I am very happy to report this news.  The BBC has announced that this summer they will be airing the new episodes from the third season of their popular sci-fi show Torchwood in both the US and the UK at roughly the same time. 

 

BBC America have confirmed to End Of Show that Torchwood will hit screens in July, in both the US and UK. In the UK the show will move to BBC One. The show is in 5 segments, with one airing each night of the week.

 

Writer Russell T Davies says “this series is one big serial and the most ambitious story we’ve ever made, and we’ve got plenty of surprises in store.”

 

The returning cast includes John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper and Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto Jones. Other regular cast involved in their high-octane adventure are Kai Owen as Rhys Williams, Gwen’s husband, and Tom Price as PC Andy.

 

Special guests in the five part series are Peter Capaldi (Doctor Who, The Thick Of It, Skins), who plays the role of Mr. Frobisher – a civil servant who is hiding a terrible secret, Paul Copely (Coronation Street, The Bill) as Clem – the survivor still haunted by his past, and Liz May Brice (Bad Girls, The Bill) as Johnson – the cynical covert government agent determined to expose Torchwood.

 

For those of you who have never seen Torchwood before, it's sort of like the X-Files but there's a whole team of people working together to protect earth from all sorts of alien and interdimensional threats.  Also, the team leader is a guy named Captain Jack Harkness who just so happens to be incapable of being killed.  He's also an omni-sexual kind of guy who has a libido that may even surpass Captain James T. Kirk's from Star Trek.  Captain Jack will flirt with (and sleep with) just about anything living.  Male, female, human, alien, it doesn't matter.

 

The upcoming third season of the show is unfortunately only five episodes long, but all five episodes are parts of a single story so you can think of this season as one long movie.  Here's the trailer for the new season.

 

The Reason For Stormtroopers Having Very Poor Blaster Accuracy Is Finally Explained

 

 

Thanks go to my good friend Tony for pointing this out to me.

Introducing The Society For Geek Advancement

 

I don't know how I've never heard of this before today, but the Society For Geek Advancement is a great group dedicated to helping everyone embrace their inner geek and to get all geeks to work together as a community to help other less fortunate but potential geeks to realize their true geek potential.  The group started with the "I AM A GEEK" video posted above, but has since grown into something much bigger.

 

“I AM A GEEK”, like all geeky side projects, started out as a tongue and cheek video we spent way too much time on and were going to simply throw out to the wild wild interwebs. But as more people came on board, the question of using “social media for social good” seemed to become more relevant. With Twitter and other social networking sites like Facebook blowing up by the second, it’s not only possible to get noticed and create “social capital”, but to use that for a greater good. Individuals now have the opportunity to be heard and bring awareness and attention to causes like they never had before. We saw this new wave of social philanthropy come to life recently with the global Twestival raising $250,000 worldwide for Charity:Water.

 

After watching, “I AM A GEEK!”, we hope you are entertained, laugh a little or a lot.

 

We also encourage everyone to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. We’ve connected with a Room to Read, a great charity started by former Microsoft exec, John Wood, which builds libraries and schools for children in developing countries. You can give in many ways- by RT, blogging and passing on this Geek Advancement message to others, buying an “I AM A GEEK” t-shirt with proceeds going to Room to Read and/or by donating what you can now.

 

Lets show everyone what it means to be a geek and the power of a global geek community!

 



 

To help support this great cause, you can buy your I Am A Geek shirt here.  The proceeds of the sale will be given to the charity Room to Read.

 

You should also check the site out a bit as they have a number of great links to geek-centric twitter feeds, facebook pages and lots of other stuff.

 

And be sure to share this with every other geek you know.

New Geek DVD Day - 05/12/09

 

The Good:  Underworld - Rise of the Lycans

 

Why It's Good:  Rise of the Lycans is a prequel to the other two Underworld films in which we get to see the beginning of the war between the vampires and the werewolves.  While it's not the greatest film in the Underworld series, it is a decent action film with some kickass vampire-on-werewolf action.  And no, that's not Kate Beckinsale on the cover.  She doesn't even show up until the last 30 seconds or so of the film (and even then it's just footage from the first underworld film).  If you're looking for a decent fantasy action film this week, Underworld should be enough to make you happy.

 



 

The Badass:  Star Trek - Original Motion Picture Collection (on Blu-ray)

 

Why It's Badass:  For the first time ever, all six Star Trek films that star the original cast are available on Blue-ray.  Everything from the Star Trek: The Motion Picture to The Undiscovered Country are now available in glorious high definition.  Also, a brand new exclusive disc is included with the set called The Captain's Summit.  Here's the description of this special feature.

 

Filmed exclusively for Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes and host Whoopi Goldberg share candid insights, humorous moments, and intimate details about life on the set, working with each other and how Star Trek has affected their lives. Presented in HD.

  

 

 

The Awesome:  This Ain't Star Trek XXX  (Warning! This link is absolutely NSFW!!!)

 

Why It's Awesome:  What could possibly be cooler than Star Trek?  How about a porn version of Star Trek?  That's right, This Ain't Star Trek XXX is a hardcore adult film that has been made by Hustler.  Starring Evan Stone (the awesome captain from the Pirates XXX movies) as captain James T. Kirk, this new movie follows the adventures of the USS Enterprise as they explore strange new worlds and seek out new life . . . and then have sex with it. 

 

Star Trek purists should note that the film looks much more accurate to the original TV series than JJ Abrams' new big budget movie does.  Plus, the main villain in the film is a young Khan Noonien Singh.  How could this possibly be bad?  As we've mentioned before here at Geek-tastic, there simply isn't enough geek-centric porn out there, but this new film is about as geeky as it gets.  We should all do our geek duty and buy a copy of this film.  It's success will send word to the adult filmmakers of the world that the geek market is a profitable one for them.  Maybe then I'll finally get that GI Joe porn I've been waiting my whole life for.

 

Still don't believe how awesome this film is?  Then just check out this mind blowingly rad (and completely work safe) trailer for the film.

 

The Difference Between Optimistic And Pessimistic Sci-Fi

When it comes to science fiction, there really are two major categories most films fall into.  One is an optimistic view of the future, in which everything is wonderful and mankind is doing great and everything is pretty and shiny.  The other is a pessimistic view of things in which some sort of apocalypse has taken place, civilization has been destroyed and the Earth is a really crappy place to be.

 

This month's two big budget sci-fi movies offer perfect representations of those two vastly different views of humanity's future.  On the one hand you have Star Trek, a utopian vision of the future in which mankind has done away with disease and poverty and racism and everyone works together for the betterment of the universe.  On the other hand you have Terminator: Salvation, in which robots have nuked human civilization to dust and are doing their best to eradicate those few lucky souls who survived the bombings.  The survivors are constantly running and hiding from big and dangerous machines who only have one purpose in life, kill everything.

 

You really can't get more polar opposite than that when it comes to views of the future, and to perfectly illustrate this point, let's take a look at how both films view the future of the city of San Francisco, California.  It just so happens that both films use the exact same shot of the city in their trailers, and the city couldn't be more different.

 



 

This, obviously, is Star Trek's view of San Francisco.  It's bright and pretty and futuristic looking with all sorts of futuristic looking skycrapers everywhere.  It actually reminds me a lot of the planet Coruscant from the Star Wars prequels.

 

Now let's compare that with this shot from Terminator: Salvation.

 



 

Note the marked difference in color.  Everything is blacks and grays.  There's no pretty skyscrapers, and you can't even see the sky really.  All that's left are fields of factories that are belching out black smoke and are pumping out machines which are hell bent on killing us all.  This shot reminds me a lot more of how things looked in Blade Runner.

 

So there you have it.  The difference between happy sci-fi and sad sci-fi.  Which future would you prefer to live in?

A Return To Proper Disney Animated Form?

 

I'm a huge fan of all the old classic Disney films.  Everything from Snow White all the way to Robinhood were childhood favorites of mine.  And then I was lucky enough to be a teenager during the second golden age of Disney animated films.  Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Mulan and more.  It really was like a return to the days of old when Disney ruled the animated world.

 

But with the rise of CG animated films and the awesomeness that is everything Pixar, classic 2D animated films have for the most part gone by the wayside.  Sure, Disney still pumps out 2D hand drawn animated films but they're almost always incredibly crappy straight-to-DVD sequels that no one cares about like Lady and the Tramp 2 or Cinderella 3 or other stupidness like that.  It's been over a decade now since Disney released a 2D film that was worth a damn (the last good one of course being Mulan back in 1998).

 

However, the new trailer for Disney's next animated film The Princess and the Frog has given me hope that the creative greatness at the Disney Animation Studios isn't gone forever.  Maybe even with a little luck, this could be a possible return to proper form for classic animated films.  The Princess and the Frog is a hand drawn 2D animated film that adapts the story of the Frog who needs to be kissed by a princess so he can regain human form.  The film looks and feels like a classic Disney film in the trailer.  The art design and the animation quality look top notch, and the characters appear to be engaging and even entertaining to watch.

 

Plus, let's not overlook the fact that Disney finally got off their lazy asses and finally have an official Disney Princess who isn't caucasion.  Yes, admittedly Mulan is Chinese, but so far she's been the only non-white Princess to date.  Now, we will finally have an African American princess who looks every bit as beautiful and rambunctious and strong willed as Ariel or Snow White or Cinderella.  It's a classy move I think, and it's entirely overdue.

 

For the first time in a very long time indeed, I am happy to say that I'm actually looking forward to seeing a new Disney animated film.  It's good to be able to say that again.

Pat's Movie Reviews: Star Trek

 

For a giant fan of the Star Trek series as I am, it was with a great mix of emotions that I went to go see the new Trek film last Friday.  I was both incredibly excited and very worried at the same time.  I was excited at the idea of getting to see a new Trek film.  After the sadly dismal box office performance of the last Star Trek film (Nemesis) back in 2002, I had long ago accepted that we would probably never see another big budget Star Trek film ever again.  However, I hadn't expected Hollywood's future obsession with franchise reboots which has enabled the original crew of the USS Enterprise to once again boldly go where no one has gone before.

 

This amazing turn of fortune was also what had me worried though.  A franchise reboot of Star Trek?  Really?  That's an incredibly tall order you're talking about there.  Star Trek has been around for over 40 years.  The characters from the original series are cultural icons.  The names Kirk and Spock are universally known, even amongst people who have never seen the show.  How do you make a film that can redifine those characters for a new generation and not make it come across as either lame or at best a pale shadow of the original series?  How do you make Star Trek relevant and exciting again to kids today to make them new fans of the series?

 

The answer apparently is that you borrow a lot of pages from that other really popular sci-fi franchise . . . Star Wars.

 

Now that comment can be taken in many different ways.  To die hard Trek fans, that's a very bad thing.  Star Trek and Star Wars are very disimiliar franchises with the latter being a high energy adventure series filled with tons of action and the former being a slower paced, usually more cerebral based series.  Trek has its action too, but it was never to the same degree as that in Star Wars.  For the vast majority of the movie going audience though, infusing Trek with a little bit (or a lot) of Star Wars magic may be just what the Doctor ordered.  Most of the mainstream complaints I've heard about Star Trek from non fans all my life is that the shows are too slow and boring.  They're too nerdy.  So it makes total sense to me then that Paramount would want their brand new Star Trek film to be as sleek and exciting and as Star Wars as possible.  Afterall, their job is to get people to buy tickets to see their film, and say what you will about the Star Wars prequel films, they all made a ton of money.  Paramount saw that and wanted a little piece of the action.

 

So now we have this new, shiny, exciting, action packed Star Trek film.  The trailers have made it look amazing, but does the film deliver?  Does the film accomplish all of it's difficult goals? Does it re-energize a failing franchise?  Does it treat the original series with the respect and dignity it deserves?  Does it manage not to come off as a cheap knock off?  Does it stand on its own as a potential new movie franchise?  And finally (and probably most importantly),  does it suck?

 

Well let me say right here and now that the film most definitely does not suck.  And the answer to all of those other questions, suprisingly, are yes.   Yes, the film delivers everything that the trailers have promised.  The new Star Trek film is fast, exciting, exhilarating to watch and is overall incredibly entertaining.  This new Trek film has taken everything that was fun and adventurous from the original 1960's TV series and has made it exciting again.  It has taken the iconic characters of Kirk and Spock and made them relevant again to younger audiences.  Hell, it even managed to make Pavel Chekov cool!

 

The biggest suprise I had watching the film was just how much I loved the casting choices for each and every single character in it.  I am a huge William Shatner fan, and I was incredibly skeptical of Chris Pine and his ability to do justice to the character.  However, Pine's version of Kirk is every bit as smooth, confident and charming as Shatner's was.  He has the right swagger, the right cocky smirk and even the same rampant sex drive too.  The same holds true for Zachary Quinto's Spock.  Aside from looking almost dead on like a young Leonard Nimoy, Quinto manages to perfectly capture the giant sea of repressed emotion that is Spock.  And Karl Urban as McCoy?  Oh wow, I couldn't have wished for a better actor to play him.  Urban's delivery of McCoy's lines were spot on.  I felt like I was listening to Deforest Kelly once again as I watched Urban lecturing Spock or ranting against the dangers of space travel.

 

The rest of the cast is just as amazing.  John Cho made Sulu a badass fighter and pilot once again.  Zoe Saldana brought all the strength and intelligence needed to play Uhura and more.  Anton Yelchin made Chekov an endearing and capable crewman worthy of his peers' respect.  And Simon Pegg as Scotty was absolutely brilliant.  One of my biggest complaints about the film actually was that Scotty didn't get nearly enough screen time.  I will give full credit to JJ Abrams and his casting people here.  They definitely know how to properly cast a film. 

 

As a summer popcorn film, the new Star Trek works amazingly well.  However, it also suffers from some of the same problems that plague a lot of big budget summer action flicks.  The plot did leave a bit to be desired, including some rather gaping plotholes that were more noticable than Spock's pointy ears.  I don't want to spoil too much here, but I will say that there's a key element to the plot which is a substance called Red Matter that has all sorts of amazing and devastating effects yet somehow we never really learn where this stuff came from, who made it or why, or even how the hell it works.  Also, there's a goodly amount of time travel nonsense that, while needed to explain away a lot of things in the film, also manages to make things  more complicated than they needed to be.

 

Another major shortcoming of the film is the lack of a strong main villain.  This isn't a knock against actor Eric Bana at all.  In fact I thought his performance as the Romulan Captain Nero was just fine.  It's the character himself I have a problem with.  I didn't really see him as a match for either Kirk or Spock mentally, his motivations didn't make a whole lot of sense if you start thinking what he could have accomplished with the Red Matter once he had control of it, and generally he spent most of the film being entirely ineffective and unimportant.  It made me seriously wonder if Khan Noonien Singh is the only worthy adversary that Kirk and company will ever face.

 

I also had some issues with a couple of technical elements of the film, such as annoying product placement (Nokia?  Really?) and JJ Abrams' massive overuse of lens flares throughout the movie, but for the most part these were minor concerns when compared to some of the massive story and technical flaws that exist in other summer films like last week's Wolverine film.

 

In the end, as a Trekkie it gives me great pleasure to say that I really liked the new Star Trek film.  This film could have gone so wrong in so many ways, and while it's certainly not a perfect film, it definitely was enjoyable to watch and managed to entertain even the bitter and jaded nerd that I am.  My favorite part of the film was the last 10 minutes or so when the whole crew finally comes together and works as a team to save the day.  That honestly felt like classic Trek to me.  And at the very end when Chris Pine walks onto the bridge in full uniform for the first time in the film and takes his rightful place in the Captain's chair, I had no problems whatsoever believing that he was James Tiberius Kirk.

 

As a franchise reboot, this worked perfectly.  It has left me wanting more.  Now that the new origin story is out of the way, I can't wait to see what we have in store in the next film.  If this film was Star Trek's version of Batman Begins, I can't even dream of how amazingly awesome their version of Dark Knight could be.  Right now, the potential is endless.  So long as they don't go saving Humpback Whales in the next film, then it should be pretty damned awesome.

 

Final Grade:  A-