Author: Maurice Mitchell
On this day, in 1967, the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “The Devil in the Dark” aired the third appearance of the now famous “Vulcan Mind Meld” as Mr. Spock uses his empathic technique to access the mind of the alien rock monster Horta. William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk, described this as “exciting, thought-provoking and intelligent, it contained all of the ingredients that made up our very best Star Treks.” The mind meld was originally created for the episode “Dagger of the Mind” as an alternative to hypnosis because, in part, they were afraid they’d accidentally hypnotize viewers…
Batman becomes a victim of the recession… [Pic of the week by moviemoron.com] This week’s news covers expensive comic books, Star Wars mascots and proves that James Cameron is an imbecile while Michael Bay is a wonderful human bean. I’d love to see the face of the guy who was famous for paying $1 million to buy Action Comics #1 (which marked the first appearance of Superman), only to have his fame snatched away three days later when someone else bought the first Batman comic for $1.08 million. Kind of like the guy who bought the Mark McGuire baseball only…
Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) comes out today, and when a movie adaptation comes out I try to read the original story so I can sniff self-righteously “the book was better.” I thought about reading the original novels and realized that I have no interest in them. Now, I admit I’m just a typical “ugly American,” but I don’t think I’m alone. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll are available to download for free from Project Gutenberg, but I doubt anyone is going to bother. Here are three reasons why:
“The world’s greatest detective has finally met his match” by being cast in the moronic, but fun, straight-to-DVD Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. When I saw the trailer for “The Asylum” knock-off, or “mockbuster,” of the block-buster movie Sherlock Holmes I couldn’t wait for another horrible film. Instead, I actually found myself enjoying it.
Here are the five most popular posts from last month here on Geek Twins in case you want to catch up. Top 21 Lists of Sexy Babes in Science-Fiction Not surprisingly, people like to see lists of sexy babes. James Cameron Calls Out the Raincoat Brigade for Avatar Oddly enough, most people find this post by looking for Neytiri’s powder-blue nipples. Sorry guys. You’ll have to wait for the unrated DVD for that. Top 10 Human Cloning Mistakes in Movies and Television This is an essay on the common goofs people make when portraying cloning. What the Green Lantern Movie…
A few weeks back an Orca, or “killer whale”, pulled a trainer into his tank at Sea World and killed her. There have been some truly tragic underwater attacks, but it made us think of some of the most memorable ocean attacks in movie history. Here we now present some of the most memorable water attacks in sci-fi movie history. 10. Jaws vs. Scuba Tank (Jaws, 1975) This attack set the standard for all other attacks. 99% of water to surface attacks are shot by cutting from the unsuspecting victim to the underwater creature. The final battle pit the massive shark against…
August 17, 1968 – February, 2010Joshua Andrew Koenig, the son of Walter Koenig, was found dead in a Vancouver park. The official cause of death was not released, but suicide, and Mr. Koenig’s father, who is best known for playing Pavel Chekov on Star Trek: The Original Series, said his son “took his own life.” The 41-year-old actor had been battling clinical depression and was missing for a week, prompting celebrities to use Twitter to try to find him. Andrew established himself as an actor in his own right with a recurring role on the 80s sitcom Growing Pains as Richard “Boner” Stabone.…
[Pic of the Week from CostumeCraze] One of your favorite posts is the hideous collection of Watchmen movie costumes, but now you can dress up in “sexy” Iron Man 2 armor from Costume Craze. It kind of loses the point of wearing armor if you strap on knee-high boots, since they just shoot you in the knee caps. Although, the company also has a “Whiplash” costume which looks OK on someone with a good body, but there’s always some big boy who decides to wear a costume three sizes too small and ruin things for the rest of us. On with the news… Despite the…
What season is this anyway? BBC America is debuting the time-travelling science-fiction show Doctor Who on Saturday Apr. 17 which is two weeks after it premieres in the U.K. The new show will include the 11th regeneration of the Time Lord, Matt Smith, a new companion, Karen Gillan, and a new head writer — Steven Moffat, who will take over for Russell T. Davies. Moffat has been with the series since 2005 and wrote some of my favorite episodes. Including Blink, which won him a “Bafta Craft Awards”, and The Girl in the Fireplace which won the show two “Hugo” awards. I’m excited about the…
There’s been a renewed interest in pulp novel heroes from the ’30s and ’40s, and now the studio that’s producing this year’s Green Hornet is planning a movie based on the wildly popular character Doc Savage, the so-called “Man of Bronze.” Created by Lester Dent in 1933, the star of books, radio, a campy 70’s movie and numerous comics, trained since birth to almost superhuman levels of human development. He was a world-class athlete, adventurer, doctor, lawyer and Indian chief traveling the world fighting evil. Sam Raimi, who’s working on a Shadow reboot, was attached to this project at one…
Dolph Lundgren, the German action star from the 80s and star of Masters of the Universe said, “I’m not really interested so much in guys flying from building to building, in funny looking suits. I think it’s more for little kids, and that’s obviously a very CG-driven film, where you can take anybody off the streets and make them a superhero, and that’s what the common man likes, because they can dream about being a superhero.” While he just has sour grapes because his action hero career took a nose dive, he does raise a good point. Most superhero movies do have…
The First Avenger: Captain America (2011) is the key for a whole slew of Marvel movies coming up, including The Avengers, so they’re focused on getting it right. I’m getting a little nervous, because it would be really easy for Joe Johnston to mess up Captain America, especially after the debacle of Wolfman (2010). There are lots of rumors going around about the flick, so we’ll list the highlights: Costume – As is usually the case, Captain America’s superhero costume gets a revision. Here’s how the director, Joe Johnston, describes it, “The costume is a flag, but the way we’re…
My brother and I LOVE the hilariously geeky Galaxy Quest (1999) movie about a bunch of actors from a cult television show (i.e. Star Trek) being kidnapped by aliens to live out their roles in space. To us, it’s the perfect homage to Star Trek and everything about it: from the quirkiness of the show, to the insanity of its fans and everything in between. Which is why it’s no cool that, over ten years later, a couple of replica toys are coming out. The N.S.E.A. Protector Spaceship model looks awesome and would have fit charmingly next to my Star…
[Pic of the week from OddballComics] Stan Lee must have read last week’s TWiG and got scared of becoming irrelevant because he’s teaming up with Archie comics to produce a comic book and television series called “Super Seven” with him playing a major role. The press release says, “It’s the story about seven aliens who find themselves stranded on planet Earth after their spaceship crashes, only to be befriended by none other than Lee himself. Taking them under his care, Lee becomes their leader and enables them to resume their lives as superheroes on earth.” How do aliens “resume their…
Here’s our joint review of GI Joe: Rise of Cobra. The following review takes place in real time… Warning: Contains spoilers if you care. Plot: A group of covert military specialists, code-named G.I. Joe, race to stop an evil weapons dealer, Destro, from unleashing a weapon that threatens to destroy the world. Monkey Migraine: Okay, I hated GI Joe: Rise of Cobra with a passion. Its the essence of what I’ll call a big-budget B-movie. They had a terrible script, a terrible director, and terrible actors, but threw money at it until it worked. Imagine this movie with everything the…
[Pic of the week from The Daily Weird] Sorry, the TWiG is late this week. My son had a high fever, and the dog ate my homework, and my brakes failed as I crashed into the US Open. The above picture is almost as cool as Graham Curson, 36, who married his wife Samantha, 26, while dressed as the Star Wars villain Darth Vader. Who is almost as cool as Ramona who had her father give her away as Darth Vader while she got married at a comic convention. And these are almost as cool as Darth Vader opening the…
The 82nd Academy Award nominations are out and we get a few juicy nominations. Avatar and District 9 have been nominated for best picture, of course, but here’s the shocker: We will now be required to say “the Oscar-Nominated Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” That’s right, the Michael Bay film is getting a nod for “Best Sound Editing”, which is kind of like getting an award for being the loudest kid in the room. Whether you loved or hated the flick, this just doesn’t sound right. This is right up there with “the Oscar-Nominated Norbit” which was nominated in 2008…
Eugene Wesley “Rod” Roddenberry Jr, the son of the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, is producing a reboot of an old 70s television pilot of his father’s, called The Questor Tapes, as a potential series. This goes so far back, I only have a flickering image in the back of my brain, but it’s burned in there none the less: the image of rows and rows of bodies going back as far as the eye can see. Intended as the pilot for a television series in 1974, the movie followed an android who goes searching for his creator, a…
[Pic of the Week by Gizmodo] Apple announced the release of the highly anticipated tablet computer, called “iPad”, and this was a red-letter day for Steve Jobs’ world conquering company in two other ways. This week, 25 years ago (January 24th 1984), the first Apple Macintosh 128K went on sale becoming the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and graphical user interface. For all you Apple Cultists out there, this week (January 30, 1982) Richard Skrenta wrote the first publicly released PC virus, called “Elk Cloner”, on an Apple computer. One day the company will just make…
Movie posters of The Last Airbender (that other Avatar movie) have been released and they look nifty. The film, based on a popular children’s animated television show, follows a young boy named Aang that discovers he has the power to control the four main elements of earth, air, fire and water. He is pursued by the evil “Fire Lord” and “Fire Clan” who wishes to destroy the last “Avatar”. But, we asked ourselves, what are the chances that M. Night Shyamalan will make a good film? So, we set out to scientifically chart his career in hopes of prognosticating how…
This is an unusually nostalgic week here at Geek Twins as we flashback to both the Topp’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back stickers and various other toys my brother and I played with in our youth. All we need now is to have a remake of the 80’s cartoon show M.A.S.K. to make my life complete. Cast Will Smith as Matt Trakker, Christian Slater as Stiletto and Hugo Weaving as Miles Mayhem. On with the news. TOSS-UP: You’re forced at gun point to choose one costume to wear to the Source Awards: would it be the Star Wars Tie-Fighter…
Sometime Google Ads (Adsense) scans our posts and has some unintentionally hilarious connections. The best is the one from This Week in Geek 10/30/2009 (which talks about a guy looking for an amputee to complete his Chewbacca costume) which offered an ad for “Amputee Dating”. The best one I’ve found since then is James Cameron Calls Out the Raincoat Brigade for Avatar which proudly offered up an ad for “Trenchcoats – Huge Sale”. Have you spotted any funny ads in our blog? Let us know in the comments!
Sony has officially announced the Spider-Man franchise will be directed by former music video director Marc Webb. Let’s take at the legacy of Sam Raimi’s directorial masterpiece: the Spider-Man trilogy. A self-confessed Spider-Man fan, when Raimi took the director’s chair he was just transitioning from the world of independent film to big Hollywood. He still had the style and grace of his early days, but had a few dramatic flicks under his belt with The Quick and the Dead (1995 ) and A Simple Plan (1998) to persuade the suits he could make a big budget action film. From the very…
Pic of the Week by Funnyjunk.comNow that’s a movie I’d like to see. The Nav’i are in outer space because they’re too scared to be on the same planet as Chuck Norris. On with the news. I was excited about The-Network-Formerly-Known-as-SciFi’s Battlestar Galactica spin-off, Caprica, until producer Ronald Moore said, “It’s setting out to tell a very different story… It’s planet-based, instead of space-based, it’s not action-adventure, it’s much more centered on two families than a military environment. We wanted it to be much more about contemporary society and problems that are coming up on a social front as well…
For some reason, one of our most popular posts to date is “TV Movie The Phantom Images Released”, so here’s an update: It’s dead. Syfy made a big splash about the upcoming mini-series based on Lee Falk’s purple-suited comic character “The Phantom” last year with a sneak peek and then quietly snuck off hoping no one would remember it. Imdb says the film is in post-production with a Canadian air date of December 20th of last year. Ryan Carnes, who plays the hero, Chris Moore, lists this film as his last project. This is not surprising considering everyone hated the goofy…
The news just broke Monday morning on Deadline.com and was confirmed by Sony in a press release that afternoon: Spider-Man 4 will not be a sequel, but a reboot of the franchise without Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire or any other member of the current franchise. Apparently, Raimi said he couldn’t maintain creative integrity and meet the release date. Sam raised with a pair of twos and Sony called his bluff, deciding just to drop the whole thing and start fresh. They already have an early script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on “a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.” Sony is…
[Pic of the Week by Tronguy.net]The amazing thing about the above picture is not that we have a big fat guy dressed in a white spandex bodysuit, but that there is a big fat guy dressed in a white spandex bodysuit who’s proud of it. Jay Maynard actually does personal appearances all over the world. You have to love that kind of self-confidence. On with the news.I’m going to make up a term I’m calling the “Titanic Effect” which describes the power that tween and teenage girls have on popular culture. It was this singular affect that pushed Titanic to…
AVH: Alien vs. Hunter (2007) is a masterpiece of poor film making with boring characters, lazy special effects and a pedestrian plot ripped off from a mediocre film, but still manages to be worth watching. William Katt, famous for his role in the 80s hit Greatest American Hero, stars as a washed up writer in a small California town who leads a ragtag band of whiners from one place after another getting decimated by the “Alien” and the “Hunter”. The motivations of the characters are so obscure that when one character kisses Katt on the forehead she goes into an…
Tron Legacy, the sequel to the 1982 film Tron, is being released in December and anyone born in the last 10 years probably has no idea why. Looking at it from 2010, the film looks cheesy, boring and ugly. So, to help put the film in context, I’ll give a brief overview of why Tron is one of the best science-fiction films ever made. The movie follows Kevin Flynn, a video game programmer played by Jeff Bridges, who is abducted to a surreal “world” inside computers where programs are people fighting in games. He joins “Tron”, a security program played…
Being rich means never having to say “I’m bald.” Last year James Cameron said, “[Avatar] makes ‘Titanic’ look like a picnic,” and it seems he was right. Avatar, which cost $430 million to finance, has already made over $1 billion in three weeks. Along with Sherlock Holmes, it led to a record breaking weekend and is nominated for four 2010 Golden Globe awards, including “Best Director” and “Best Motion Picture.” He still has a ways to go before eclipsing “Titanic’s” $1.8 billion, eight Golden Globe nominations and three Oscars, but it’s still an amazing achievement. Personally, I hope he wins so he can…