Sci-Fi Squad Sci-Fi Movies, News, Trailers, DVDs and More

Star Trek: Nemesis, directed Stuart Baird, 2002

Like most Star Trek fans, I have mixed feelings about the final big screen adventure featuring the Next Generation cast. Nemesis delivers solid action and a few surprising moments – the Enterprise ramming a Reman warship, Data sacrificing himself to save the crew – but it lacks the heart, soul and depth of the great Trek films, especially the first TNG solo movie, First Contact.

Director Suart Baird, who mostly worked as an action movie editor before landing Nemesis, somehow managed to rob the characters and actors of all the chemistry they'd built up after more than a decade of working together. Inception star Tom Hardy does a decent job of hissing and snarling his way through playing the impossible role of Captain Picard's evil, limey, twentswomething clone despite not looking a thing like Patrick Stewart.

I've always found it comforting to know that some of my favorite rock stars are also huge nerds. The knowledge that the chain-wallet-sporting headbangers from Judas Priest and Megadeth dig sci-fi movies and horror imagery makes me feel like I could hang with the bands if I ever made it backstage to one of their concerts.

How do I know that these guys are just as obsessive about sci-fi and horror as I am? Just check out their album covers. They're loaded with spaceships, robots, futuristic landscapes and riffs on B movie posters and comic book covers. Check 'em out: Blastr has compiled 57 sci-fi and fantasy-themed album covers for your time-wasting pleasure.

Don't worry Top 40 fans; the isn't a "metal albums only" list. Fans of pop and classic rock will be happy to learn that Ringo Starr, Christina Aguilera and Aerosmith are prone to letting their inner geek take over their album art decisions.

That Sam Witwicky sure does a terrible job of hiding his Transformer pals from the public eye, doesn't he? Looks like ol' Optimus Prime, who seems to be made out of a million junked cars, stepped out for a breather at Green Dream Park in Beijing, China this week.

The iconic Autobot stands at about 40 feet tall and weighs 6 tons, only slightly smaller than Japan's giant Gundam bot that was unveiled in Tokyo last year. Maybe it's just the Quarter Pounder-chompin' American in me, but something tells me that the red, white and blue-clad Prime would wipe the floor with Gundam in a giant robot street brawl, even if the Japanese mechabot was sporting his beam saber.

[via: CNet]

Welcome to I Would Revisit/Abandon, a regular SciFi Squad feature where we decide whether or not the door should be shut on a science fiction series, franchise or universe. Expect new entries every Wednesday and Friday, and watch out for potential spoilers beyond the jump!

This week, we'll be re-thinking those plane tickets to...



Place: A doomed Antarctic research base in the year 1982 where a group of scientists are about to make a frightening and deadly discovery.

Predators, directed by Nimród Antal, 2010

Unofficial Predators month continues here at SciFi Squad. While Jacob Hall explores the little things that made the original Predator flick so great in his latest Movie Club post, I'm here to tell you that Nimród Antal's Predators is one of most entertaining popcorn movies of the summer. Antal updates the classic Predator formula – one giant jungle, dudes with big guns, a crazy dreadlocked alien monster, and lots of blood spillage – by pitting a group of trained killers against two teams of deadly Predators on an alien planet.

A newly buff and gruff Adrien Brody leads the human team against the crab-jawed big bads, who have their own little civil war going on in the middle of all the human hunting. Predators, produced by Robert Rodriguez, smartly stays away from overblown CGI-laced action set pieces. The movie is more of a throwback to the '80s with down and dirty action scenes that seem organic to the story and characters with big mouths and bad attitudes. It's a fun and fast-paced action flick that, surprisingly, stands on its own and adds more details to the Predator mythos without feeling like a blatant set-up for more sequels.

Hot off his kooky cameo in Predators, Morpheus himself, Laurence Fishburne, has joined the all-star cast of director Steven Soderbergh's upcoming sci-fi thriller Contagion, reports Variety.

Contagion marks the second major sf-tinged drama for Soderbergh, who remade Andrei Tarkovsky's classic Solaris in 2002 with George Clooney.

Contagion will have more in common with the filmmaker's Oscar winning drug war epic Traffic. It will follow a number of different plotlines and people reacting to the outbreak of a deadly virus. (No word if Marcel the Monkey is involved.)

A new flick from Soderbergh is always reason for excitement. A Soderbergh sci-fi thriller with Fishburne, Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet? Can. Not. Wait.

An apparent fan of indie film and sci-fi (and Absinthe?) decided to combine his love of the two awesome film genres for one spectacularly awful-looking tattoo: The Darth Buscemi.

Yep, that's a tattoo of Mr. Pink himself, Steve Buscemi, wincing behind Darth Vader's cracked mask. We're wincing back, tattoo. We're wincing back.

[via: Geekologie]

Looking for something good and geeky to watch? Here's a look at this week's new DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (DVD and Blu-ray)
Thrill to the mediocre spectacle of a boy who learns that he's the spawn of a Greek god in a movie that desperately wants to be the next Harry Potter that's based on a book series that desperately wants to be the next Harry Potter. Pick it up for the slumming supporting cast that includes Sean Bean, Steve Coogan, Pierce Brosnan, Rosario Dawson, Catherine Keener, Joe Pantoliano and Uma Thurman.

Eureka: Season 3.5 (DVD)
And speaking of mediocre spectacle ... OK,OK, I'll play nice ... I actually kind of love this Syfy show. It's a charming and silly little slice of light sci-fi that's perfect for a lazy summer spent on the couch.

Hot Tub Time Machine (DVD and Blu-ray)
Playing more like a half-scripted bachelor party than a feature-length movie, Hot Tub Time Machine offers a few laughs in between all the crude and obnoxious gags that fall flat. The talented cast manages to breathe some life into this half-baked project, which is nowhere near as funny as other popular fantasy/sci-fi comedies like Ghostbusters or even Ivan Reitman's Evolution.

Warehouse 13: Season One (DVD)
The first half of W13's first season is pretty slow-going, with great concepts and guest stars – Tricia Helfer, Michael Hogan – being pushed aside in favor of dull procedural plots. But the final few eps give in to the craziness of the show's premise – two agents track down mystical artifacts to house in a mysterious warehouse – and deliver some really fun moments. Season two starts next week on Syfy!

Predator (Ultimate Hunter Edition) (Blu-ray)
Now with sharper-looking mandibles, presumably.

An auction house is giving sci-fi fans the chance to own one of the most famous props in movie history: the T-800's cyber-arm from Terminator 2.

An (evil?) art director saved the arm from the set of James Cameron's groundbreaking sci-fi sequel starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a one-liner spewing murderbot, mirroring Miles Dyson, who saved a similar robo-arm from wreckage in the original movie, So, yeah, sometimes life does imitate art in some very, very creepy ways.

The arm up for auction isn't the one shown in the pic up top, it's the one that was blown up at the steel mill during the movie's climax.

Genetically modified titans will clash in the Syfy original movie Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, but it's a promised showdown between '80s pop stars Debbie Gibson and Tiffany that has us anticipating the Z-grade creature feature.

The flick will stsr Gibson as a "fanatical animal-rights activist" who gets into a physical brawl with Tiffany's "overzealous park ranger" after they both unwittingly help to create the movie's CGI-enhanced monsters.

The ladies will duke it out in a swamp, where a hunky pizza deliveryman may or may not show up to ... oh wait, this is basic cable, right?

Syfy will air the movie next year.

[Via: The Live Feed]