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

I know you're bummed that you missed out on that wicked awesome velcro Tron wallet during the recent Flynn Lives viral campaign, but don't worry, the world of Tron Legacy collectible memorabilia has not ended yet. If you head over to Arcade Aid you can find a little Tron Legacy mini-game that could net you an ENCOM employee ID badge.

All you have to do is scroll through their visual puzzle and correctly identify the 56 classic games referenced within. It sounds pretty easy. Once you've proven that a lifetime's worth of playing video games has finally paid off, you'll be taken to a screen that will ask what you want on your badge. And then through the magic of the US Postal Service, you'll eventually find a real life ENCOM badge in your mail box.

Simple enough, no? Happy Hunting.

I thank them for taking on the task, but I do not envy Syfy one iota in regards to making a Sharktopus movie. We're not talking Star Trek canon here, we're not talking about turning Starbuck from a guy to a girl; we're talking about the abominable, perversion of nature that is a shark combined with an octopus. If they don't get every detail of this holy grail of monster mashups correct, I am going to write a very strongly worded Tweet about it all.

First the debate was over how many mouths the God on Earth should have, but now that that is presumably settled, the network has moved onto deciding who should slay the mighty foe. I can only assume the search has been long and tireless, but it looks like they've finally settled on their hero of the 9pm Saturday hour and if you guessed it would be Eric Roberts, you are correct. You're also capable of reading, since I put it right up there in the title.

Snark aside, I'm glad they settled on Roberts over one of the lesser Baldwins (Sharks in Venice is still a sore subject for me). He's been in a string of straight-to-video projects lately, but my hatred for The Chaos Experiment is still not enough to make me forget about his recent roles in The Dark Knight, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and Phat Girlz (okay, so I can't turn off the snark when talking Syfy). Roberts will be playing the mad scientist who gives metaphorical (I assume) birth to the Sharktopus, which means he'll now be going head-to-head with Jeffrey Combs (for Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy) for the Best Character Actor Who Becomes a Victim of His Own Diabolical Plan to Genetically Engineer Sharks award I just invented.

Quirk books really knows how to reel in impulse buyers. First they managed to lure in those who couldn't resist the concept of Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (and really, who can reset corsets and sabres versus legions of the undead?) and now it looks like they're trying to go after anyone susceptible to the idea of crossing over the Star Trek universe with the brain-loving zombies horror fans have known and loved for years.

The title is, of course, Night of the Living Trekkies and the seven word pitch is quite simply, "Galaxy Quest meets Dawn of the Dead". No, writer Kevin David Anderson (is it a law at Quirk books that their writers must have three part names?) is not literally combining the great Galaxy Quest with the world of George Romero, though I think we can all agree that that would indeed be awesome. No, NOTLT is about what happens when a rampant bout of zombism starts chewing its way through a Star Trek convention, leaving the normally meek attendants as ad hoc heroes.

There is no publishing date available yet, but hopefully we'll be reading the lines "Set phasers to headshot!" sooner rather than later.

[Photo via aloalosabine on Flickr.]

In case you missed the initial post, my pick for this past weekend's Sci-Fi Squad Movie Club was Chris Gorak's 2006 indie flick Right at Your Door. So if you're still planning on watching it (and I obviously recommend that you do), you should stop reading now as there are spoilers incoming. If that's the case (and even if it isn't), hop over to Cinematical's Movie Club, where Monika is doing The Graduate, and/or Horror Squad, where Brad is talking about the pulse-pounding French gem Ils.

You've been warned.

Official Synopsis: "After multiple dirty bombs are detonated spreading deadly toxic ash across Los Angeles Brad (Rory Cochrane) inadvertently quarantines his wife Lexi (Mary McCormack) outside their new home by safely sealing himself inside. With the city under siege and Martial Law in effect Brad and Lexi struggle to survive with little supply limited time and no information - all the while separated by thin doors and thinner sheets of plastic. When "help" finally does arrive it appears to be anything but."

[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

I'm sure it made everyone smile when a young James Tiberius Kirk was hauling down a dirt road at the beginning of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek hit the play button on the radio and the Beastie Boys' oh-so-familiar Sabotage came blasting on. But you know what? That cultural collision wasn't just quit geeky enough for someone on the Internet and thus the Battlestar Galactica / Sabotage match-up was born.

This is no ordinary mash-up though. Someone didn't cobble together a bunch of BSG clips and set them to the tune. No, they actually edited the footage to mirror the original Sabotage video as closely as possible. And if you don't remember the original video well enough to have your jaw slightly dropped, give this YouTube Doubler link a go and see if it doesn't do the trick. At the very least, it'll make you want to rewatch BSG something fierce.

I don't want to say that the Sci-Fi Squad Movie club got off to a rough start, but I think it is fair to say that Jacob and I both picked movies that were a little less accessible than most sci-fi movies tend to be. So I think this weekend we'll stray away from the more dour side of the genre and go with something a bit more thrilling*: Chris Gorak's Right at Your Door.

If you haven't seen this largely undiscovered 2006 mini-gem already, it's about what happens after a dirty bomb goes off in Los Angeles. Except it's not the large scale disaster movie you might think. Instead of Gorak attempting to go the Roland Emmerich route, he opted for a more intimate scale that explores what happens to a single couple after a dirty bomb goes off in LA. The result is a tightly wound, well plotted little film that would have been right at home as an Outer Limits episode from the '90s.

It's a common enough movie that your local rental store should have a copy, but if you're like me and have a crippling fear of walking out your front door lest a dirty bomb go off in your city, Right at Your Door is available on Netflix Watch Instantly. I don't have any discussion questions to keep in mind off the bat, so just kick back, enjoy at your leisure over the weekend and then on Monday I'll have a longer writeup to offer.

*Okay, so as you can tell from its plot, Right at Your Door isn't exactly an upper of a movie, but it's still a lot of fun.

[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be occasionally supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

Bollywood is known primarily for two things. The first is making low-budget movies that rip-off high budget Hollywood movies, the second is a penchant for inserting a dance number whenever possible. But what happens when a Bollywood movie has a high budget and minimal dance numbers? Better yet, what happens when Bollywood tries to make a high-concept, big-budget sci-fi film with minimal dance numbers?

Love Story 2050 is what happens. And man, I can't wait to track down a copy of it, because judging from the trailer, narrated by someone who sounds like they couldn't be less interested, this thing has it all. Did you love the Time Machine, but wish it took place in India? Did you like the robot factories of I, Robot, but wish they were robot factories in Mumbai? Big fan of Teddy from A.I. Artificial Intelligence? The futuristic swordplay in Ultraviolet? Longing for the flying cabs of The Fifth Element with Indian drivers?

Well, friend with incredibly strange taste, today is your lucky day.

How do you follow up the headshot-loving Dawn of the Dead remake, the limb-chopping frenzy of 300, and the adults-only superhero mentality of Watchmen? With a 3D CGI fantasy film for kids, of course! Yep, Zack Snyder is breaking the mold of making violent, blood-spilling films that earn their R rating with Legend of the Guardians, an adaptation of the fantasy series Guardians of Ga'Hoole written by Kathryn Lasky. If, like myself, you have no idea what the source material is about, the above picture of an owl's face might be a little confusing.

The series, which began back in 2003 and ended in 2008 after 15 books, is about a young Barn Owl who gets kidnapped by a group of malicious owls that run an orphanage that brainwashes other young owls into becoming soldiers; soldiers who will then go on to fight the innocent group of Ga'Hoole owls. Now I realize that brief description may sound like a light and fluffy adventure story for kids only, but I think it's safe to say that with Snyder at the helm of a $100 million budget at Warner Brothers (which is only $30mil less than he was given for Watchmen), Legend of the Guardians may be one of the surprise spectacle films of the year.

The release date of September 24th is still a ways off. In the mean time, USA Today has some new stills from the movie, but if you're more into pictures that move about and such, the first teaser trailer is embedded below.

I'm not much of a fantasy reader myself (I hone closer to sci-fi more often than not), but a lot of my friends are. When I told them that HBO had ordered a pilot for a potential series based on George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones novel series, I'm pretty sure each one of them tried to hide a geekgasm. I shudder at the thought of how they'll feel now that HBO has now gone beyond the pilot and ordered a full 10-episode first season for the long-term hopeful.

The plan is to begin filming the series this June with a premiere date some time next spring. Though Martin himself has a history of TV writing (he has a few Twilight Zone episodes under his belt and was also a producer/writer on Beauty and the Beast), show duties will reside with David Benioff and Dan Weiss. The goal is to turn each of Martin's books into a single season, which currently gives Benioff and Weiss four season's worth of material to work with if the show does well.

HBO has released the first still from the pilot, which you can glimpse above, but if you head over to The Hollywood Reporter you can find a much larger version of the picture as well as a few more details on the series. THR also has this handy face-to-name casting chart of who all the recurring characters are and who will be playing them, so if you're a fan of the novels give it a glance to see if HBO has done right by what you envisioned or if you fear TV will soon have another Legend of the Seeker travesty on its hands.

The cult of Rapture is fascinating. I'm not just talking about the fictitious, underwater dream city created by Andrew Ryan that's the setting for both BioShock and its just-published sequel. Sure, a derelict underwater metropolis-cum-dystopia filled with people who have turned into maniacs due to genetic splicing is interesting in its own right, but even more fascinating to me are the people who praise it up and down. Why?

Because BioShock 2 is a disappointment. As a sequel, it's such a consistently lackluster, uninspired enterprise that I can't understand how other people don't agree. Every review I have read has been overwhelmingly positive, praising 2K-Marin's crack at the original property created by 2K-Boston/Australia as a worthwhile return to Rapture. And I wouldn't necessarily disagree with it being worthwhile if it cost, say, $15 bucks, but it doesn't. It costs $60, just like almost all next generation games do these days. The trouble with BioShock 2, aside from the fact that it takes less than 8 hours to beat, is that it feels less comprehensive than the first BioShock.

Yes, it has a different storyline this time out. Yes, it's as meticulously designed as the first game was. Yes, the voice talent is as good as the first game. Yes, it has just as many "moral dilemmas" as the first game. Yes, the plasmids are just as cool as they were in BioShock. But that's the problem, isn't it? This is a sequel; nothing should be just as good as it was in the first game.