Author: Nigel G Mitchell

With my recent series of articles on the flawed science in the movie Avatar, they tended to be a bit long-winded. On the principle of “less is more,” we decided to see whether they would be better as infographics. Here’s the first one, based on our discussion of floating mountains, and your response will determine if there’s more. What do you think?

 Back in the eighties, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were huge, and I’m not talking about the lame kiddie show. I’m talking about the original comic books. The independent comic book that inspired a media franchise was a runaway hit the likes of which the industry hadn’t seen in decades. Like every success, there was also a mountain of imitators. These comics positioned themselves as parodies of TMNT, but since the Turtles were themselves parodies of martial arts and superhero comics, they didn’t come off too well. In fact, the independent black-and-white comic industry was so flooded with martial arts…

Iron Man 2 had a lot of awesome stuff: Whiplash, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, the suitcase armor, War Machine, drone Iron Man robots. But what I loved almost as much as all that were the Ironettes. In case you don’t know their name, you know who they were – the dancers wearing Iron Man-inspired costumes in the introduction of the StarkEXPO. I was laughing my head off at the over-the-top performance of that whole scene. While there’s been a lot of buzz about the Ironettes, I thought we should bring it all together so you can find out…

Iron Man 2 (2010) Iron Man Dancers at Stark Expo With the DVD release of Iron Man 2 today, we’ll be devoting posts all this week to the movie. Today, we thought we’d recycle…uh, I mean, re-post one of our more popular posts from the original release. It’s a line-up of some of the hottest pics we could find of the hottest women from Iron Man 2. All blockbuster movies have sexy women in them, but Iron Man has an exceptionally large number of them because of Tony Stark’s extra-curricular activities. Here are the hottest pictures of the hottest actresses in the movie Iron…

In honor of the release of the DVD for Iron Man 2, we’d like to take a look back at some of the background of the movie. Today, we’ll be profiling Whiplash and comparing the comic book version and the movie version. Most of the movie version of Whiplash actually combined history and elements of two of Iron Man’s enemies: the Crimson Dynamo and Whiplash. The Crimson Dynamo was basically a Russian version of Iron Man, various agents of the Soviet Union who wore a super-powered suit of armor. The Crimson Dynamo mainly played into Cold War-era politics with the…

Well, the results are in for our poll on the best captain in the Star Trek series. Not surprisingly, it was mainly a race between Captain Picard and Captain Kirk. The results? Captain Kirk, by one vote. Every vote counts. Captain Sisko and Captain Janeway both tied for second with one vote, and Captain Archer was in last place with zero votes. As it should be. Since we’re tackling the big issues in geekdom, let’s go for another battle royale: Star Trek vs. Star Wars. Let’s get ready to rummmmmmble!

Lately, I’ve been nitpicking Avatar, but I don’t just limit my nitpicks to movies I don’t like. That’s why my wife doesn’t like watching movies with me. To prove it and celebrate the DVD release on 09/28, here’s a list of my top twelve nitpicks of one of my favorite movies this year, Iron Man 2. WARNING: Contains spoilers for the movie

The Event premiered on Monday, a heavily-hyped new show on NBC that seems like the umpteenth sci-fi drama in the last few years designed to capture the mystery and excitement of Lost. Will The Event succeed where Flashforward failed? Only time will tell, but the reviews are in, and they are definitely a mixed bag. Out of twenty-four critics at Metacritic, the overall review is 67%, a generally favorable score. There were sixteen totally positive reviews versus one totally negative review, which would seem to be a good sign. However, there were seven mixed reviews, which seems to be a…

Topless Robot had an absolutely brilliant idea that I wish I had: what if Twitter existed in Star Wars? They had a contest for the best tweets from the Death Star during the rebel attack, and the results were absolutely hilarious. A lot of them weren’t really something we could post on a family-friendly blog, so you can check them out at Topless Robot (warning: contains strong language). They announced their own winners, but here are what we think were the top ten funniest (and cleanest) contributions. If you’re not familiar with Twitter, then a) you should get out more,…

Back in 1994,a group of amateur filmmakers asked themselves an important question: what if Star Trek had been made in the silent movie era? The result is the fantastic fan video Steam Trek: The Moving Picture. A hilarious combination of steampunk and sight gags, this is the movie Charlie Chaplin would have made if he liked sci-fi. Or if sci-fi had existed in his era. My favorite part is when they use the “transporter.”

I wasn’t surprised about the results, and maybe you aren’t, either: Princess Leia swept the poll. But surprisingly, Aayla Secura and Padme Amidala are tied for second. I say surprising, because I didn’t expect that a woman who had less than five minutes of screen time to tie with someone who was in the lion’s share of all three Star Wars prequels. Our new poll will tackle another big question of sci-fi: Who was the best captain of the Star Trek universe: Captain Picard, Captain Kirk, or Captain Janeway? You be the judge.

Originally posted on September 05, 2005 on Monkey Migraine Mountain Why does the starship Enterprise have running lights? I know the answer is, “Because that way other ships can see it. It’s dark out there.” That makes sense on airplanes, but are spaceships really navigating by looking out the window? They have all those fancy sensors, scanners, holograms, and starmaps. They always go “I’m picking up a Klingon warship on our sensors.” I’ve never seen Data pointing out the window and going, “Does that look like a spaceship to you?” I’ve never seen them come out of warp and Captain…

This chart proves that the geriatric actress Betty White is a central focal point for every major science-fiction movie franchise ever made. Imagine a world without Betty White. We wouldn’t have Alien, Transformers or Star Trek. Star Wars wouldn’t exist and Avatar would be missing two major actors. Truly a sad world. Thank you Betty White for uniting and bringing us the world of science-fiction.

Witness one of the few World of Warcraft videos that can be enjoyed by non-WOW players. If you know the name Leeroy Jenkins, then you know what we’re talking about. And if you don’t, you will after you watch this clip…and you’ll never forget it. [Warning: Contains strong language]

Of all the horrible reviews for The Last Airbender, I think this line captures it all. And is very funny. From Cinematical: “A soul-crushing disaster made worse by unnecessary, counterproductive 3-D, The Last Airbender fails to immediately qualify as the worst film of the summer only by virtue of the year’s abundance of other candidates.”

Ever since I saw Fantastic Voyage as a kid, I’ve wanted to see a microbe close up. Of course, you can see the pictures on an electron microscope, but that’s not quite the same as actually holding them in your hand. Until they perfect the shrink ray, the closest I’ll ever get to that dream comes from Giant Microbes.Giant Microbes makes stuffed dolls out of microscopic organisms. There’s a huge variety of diseases, cells, and bacteria to choose from. All of them are very cleverly designed to be recognizable as the original microbe, but not so accurate as to be…

The results are in from the poll! The question was “Which of these INCEPTION actors would make a good BATMAN villain?” Joseph Gordon-Levitt won by a landslide, probably based on rumors that he’ll be playing the Riddler in Christopher Nolan’s third Batman movie. Ellen Page was a close second, which makes me wonder what villain she would play. Catwoman? Poison Ivy? Anyway, thanks to everyone who voted. This week’s poll will be a major geek smackdown. Who’s the sexiest babe in the Star Wars movies; Princess Leia Organa, Queen Padme Amidala, or Aayla Secura?

A lot of people familiar with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles know them from the popular animated series. A somewhat smaller group (who consider themselves cooler) know the TMNT from the comic books. But even that group may not know all the details. Here are ten things you probably didn’t know about the kung-fu amphibians. The idea for the comic book series came from a doodle drawn by Kevin Eastman one night in 1983. It showed a lumpish turtle with two nunchucks. He and his partner Peter Laird thought the contrast of the supposedly slow turtle moving with the speed…

PICARD: Computer. COMPUTER: [chirp] Welcome to the USS Enterprise Voice Recognition System. If you know the extension of the person you’d like to call, please say it now. For environmental changes, please say “environment.” For access to records and documents, please say “records.” For entertainment options, please say “entertainment.” For information on ship systems and diagnostics, please say, diagnostics.” For the replicator, please say “replicator.” For– PICARD: Replicator. COMPUTER: You said “diagnostics.” Is that correct? PICARD: No. COMPUTER: You said, “No.” Is that correct? PICARD: Yes. COMPUTER: I’m sorry. Please state your request again. For environmental changes, please say “environment.”…

We recently featured an article on the satirical collection of news stories from alternate realities called What Were Once Miracles Are Now Children’s Toys by Ira Nayman. Now comes a radio play based on the book called Weight of Information. The first one is about the mystery of gigantic floating heads that appear over every city in the world…but just float there whispering gibberish, which leads to debate as to their origin and purpose [youtube]. The second one features a behind-the-scenes peek into the Alternate Reality News Service and how it works [youtube]. Both are well-produced and funny. That said,…

Today’s video is brought to you by Ivan Guerrero (a.k.a. whoiseyevan). He creates what he calls “premakes,” old movie clips edited as if they were 1950’s versions of modern movies. One of his masterpieces is a trailer for The Empire Strikes Back, circa 1950. See what the AT-ATs, Boba Fett, and Darth Vader would have looked like way back then.

Adapted from a post originally posted on Monkey Migraine Mountain on April 29, 2005 It turns out that not only did the fans hate the little kid in Phantom Menace, so did the little kid. Jake Lloyd, the boy who was given such classic lines as “yippeee” did his first interview in six years for MTV.com. Turns out he’s been in seclusion all these years, trying to recover from the humiliation of that movie. And he’s sixteen! Can you believe it’s been that long? How time flies. After reading that interview, we sought out and got an exclusive interview with…

One of the best stories that Carrie Fisher tells in her latest book and memoir Wishful Drinking is her explanation for why Princess Leia was so, er, bouncy in the original Star Wars. Remember the white dress I wore all through that film [Star Wars]? George [Lucas] came up to me the first day of filming, took one look at the dress and said: “You can’t wear a bra under that dress.” “OK, I’ll bite,” I said. “Why?” And he said: “Because… there’s no underwear in space.” While that is a ridiculous statement in itself, it gets better. Recently, after…

Yesterday, Google decided to celebrate the 71st anniversary of the original release of The Wizard of Oz…for some reason. In honor of this odd anniversary, we decided to celebrate it in our own way by listing the ten craziest but absolutely true facts about the movie. 1. The Nazi Connection – In 1938, when filming began on The Wizard of Oz, the Nazi regime in Germany was in full swing. The Nazis had a policy of exterminating “undesirables,” which included those born with a physical impairment. Some of the diminutive actors who played the Munchkins were part of a German…

So we’ve gotten our first glimpse of Thor in the official movie trailer. I personally was underwhelmed with Chris Hemsworth’s performance. Is he the best choice for this role? No. He’s just the cheapest. Even though it’s too late to make any kind of campaign, I still think it’s worth considering who would have been a great Thor if Marvel wasn’t watching their purse strings for the budget of the upcoming Avengers movie. 5. Paul “Triple H” Levesque – One area where Hemsworth falls short is the physique. He has an okay body, but no more than the average actor…

While I was researching Slave Leia group appearances for last week’s Jedi Junkies week, I found a great article that discusses the controversial aspect of the Slave Leia costume. Called “Princess Leia and the Ubiquitous Bikini,” lady geek Audrey M. Brown presents her viewpoint that the Slave Leia cosplay scene is really about sexism and exploitation, not Star Wars fandom. It really captures all the reasons why the Slave Leia phenomenon makes the geek in me uneasy, even as the red-blooded male in me enjoys it. Here are some of her points: Slave Leia’s costume is overexposed – Princess Leia…

Do you love Star Wars? It’s Jedi Junkies week and you’ll get your Star Wars fix right here. So come back every day for posts that will make you laugh, think and enjoy the movie you love. Part 6 of 7 There’s no doubt that Princess Leia’s harem outfit when she became a slave to Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi (most commonly described as Slave Leia) is the most popular geek fantasy out there. That was honored in the movie Jedi Junkies when they interviewed the belly-dancing Slave Leia. What could be better than a beautiful woman…

Do you love Star Wars? It’s Jedi Junkies week and you’ll get your Star Wars fix right here. So come back every day for posts that will make you laugh, think and enjoy the movie you love. Part 2 of 7 Today, in honor of the awesome life-sized Millennium Falcon from the movie Jedi Junkies, here’s a list of the top ten best life-size Star Wars replicas. 10. Life-Size Imperial Speeder Bike and Bike Scout – First up on the list is an enterprising fellow who created a full-scale version of the Imperial speeder bike and Imperial scout from Return…

This is the way Patrick Stewart should have been knighted by the Queen. jIH DaH ja’ SoH Sir Patrick Stewart! Qapla! Other news… Ray Arifianto, a Microsoft game developer, was given a custom-made wedding ring designed to look like a USB drive by his wife. The ring was created by Foxfire Jewelers, known for their unique creations, and has “for a lifetime of memories” inscribed inside of it. Some people are calling his wife the best wife ever. Monkey Migraine: I disagree. The best wife ever would have given him a working USB wedding ring. Maurice: Did it at least…