Friday, January 13, 2012

SciFi News For 1-13-12

"Run, Runner!"...Dystopian Science Fiction Films Of The 70"s:

5 Future Inventions That Many Have Been Waiting For:

"Cruising With Curiosity" The Latest On The Mars Rover (Video 1:30)

$10 Million Dollar Prize For Any Inventor Who Can Build A Real Star Trek Tricorder:

Q&A With The Founder Of "The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction":

Harry Potter Actors Get Tested On Their American Accents: (Video 1:42)

Man Builds 19-foot-tall Apollo Model Out Of Lego's:

OTHER NEWS 
There's movement on the Trek home front again as filming was officially started yesterday on the next "Star Trek" sequel. Sources say that the new film has called for more sets than the previous movie including sections of Enterprise not seen in the 2009 movie. That includes improvements to the engine room, which for the first movie was just a dressed-up Budweiser plant.

Not much has been heard lately concerning the status of the new "Battlestar Galactica" spinoff series "Blood & Chrome", but a decision on when fans will get a chance to see the episode is coming soon. Even if Syfy does pick the show up for series, don't expect a premiere until at least 2013. "Blood & Chrome" takes place before the "Battlestar Galactica" series but after the BSG prequel series "Caprica," which lasted just a single season.The new show, which features a young William Adama on a sleek new Battlestar Galactica, was a tricky prospect because the sets for BSG are long gone but knowing there could be potential franchise built around the first reimagined series, production crews took extensive photos of the sets so that they could be used in backgrounds in future projects. 

A "24" movie that everyone felt was eventually coming....Is finally coming! It’s been a “it’s probably going to happen” rumor for a while now, but according to Kiefer Sutherland, a 24 movie is going forward at last, and it’s set to start shooting this April. Not much is known yet about the plot, but one element in the movie that everyone agrees will be needed is a strong villain.

If plans remain the same the next sci-fi film we’ll see from Steven Spielberg will be "Robopocalypse", based on the novel by Daniel H Wilson. It should go into production after the director’s finished his next movie project, "Lincoln" He recently told a London magazine “It’s a movie about a global war between man and machine… It’s a future that is coming true faster than any of us thought it would.”

"Avatar" fans who want to see more of their favorite blue people may have to wait longer than anticipated. During a recent interview producer Jon Landau revealed that the planned summer release of 2014 for the second movie could be unrealistic in that it’s “four years away.”

This weekend the orbit of the failed Russian Mars Probe Phobos-Grunt will start decaying. Russian officials estimate it will re-enter Earth's atmosphere between Saturday and Monday and that, at most, 20 to 30 fragments of the probe, weighing a total of less than 440 pounds may reach Earth’s surface.

Vladimir Popovkin, chief of Russia's Federal Space Agency recently hinted that foul play may be responsible for the failure of Russia's Mars probe Phobos-Grunt, as well as a string of other embarrassing setbacks that plagued the country's space agency last year. "It is unclear why our setbacks often occur when the vessels are traveling through what for Russia is the dark side of the Earth, in areas where we do not see the craft and do not receive its telemetry readings,"  "I do not want to blame anyone, but today there are some very powerful countermeasures that can be used against spacecraft whose use we cannot exclude,"

BOOK REVIEWS
"The Other" - Matthew Hughes:
http://georgekelley.org/?p=9865 
"Boneyards" - Kristine Kathryn Rusch 
http://en.risingshadow.net/library?action=book&book_id=33091
"Broken Angels" - Richard Morgan
http://digitalsciencefiction.com/book-review-broken-angels-by-richard-morgan/
"M.V.M Mech Vs Magic - The Battle For Harpathia" - Daniel A Neves
http://mechvsmagic.com/

SCIFI MOVIE ACTOR FACT 
James Caan, who took more than his share of bumps and bruises in the 1975 futuristic film "Rollerball", in real life spent 9 years on the pro rodeo circuit.

SCIFI NEWS QUOTE OF THE WEEK 
"Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He's always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children." - Steve Wozniak

2 comments:

  1. Great list of news Jan. Good grief. What's taking Cameron so long to make Avatar 2? He made it sound like they were already written!
    http://www.thegeektwins.com

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  2. Thanks for the links Jan. 120000 Lego bricks! Those guys are so talented.

    ReplyDelete