Following a year-long hiatus, television’s best series Battlestar Galactica goes back on air tonight for its fourth and final season.

The thin line that separates humanity from the rapidly evolving Cylon is redrawn, as Starbuck returns from the dead with claims that she has found Earth. “He that believeth in me”, Episode 4.01, airs on SCI FI tonight at 10/9C. However, SCI FI will stream the entire episode a full ten hours earlier (12/1C) online on the official BSG website!

To get you into the mood and bring you up to date, you can watch an eight minute recap of the first three seasons on Youtube.

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Posted in Battlestar Galactica, Television •

Production on Michael Bay’s Transformers 2 is set to commence this summer, but with the script already in development chances were we’d glean some information about the sequel before then.

IESB.net has now posted a casting list for new human characters in the film which includes Sam’s conspiracy theorist Princteon roommate Chuck, an African American military leader, a UK Special Forces leader, a presidential liason called Galloway, Sam’s Princeton physics professor Colan, Sgt. Epps’ sassy wife Theresa, a Texas congressman, and an FBI director.

More interesting though is the site’s intel on the new Decepticons that are set to appear in the film. It seems the evil half of the robot aliens will get help from the Constructicons, who in the original cartoon were six Decepticons that transform into construction site vehicles and, more importantly, could merge into one giant robot who went by the name of Devastator. Fanboy heaven! The film is looking to be released in 2009.

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Posted in Movies, Transformers •

Aint-it-cool-news has posted what seem to be the first details on the planet-bound Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica, which is currently being developed at SCI FI.

The exclusive report features an intruiging breakdown of the main characters set to appear in the show, including the father of BSG’s Admiral Adama, Joseph Adama, and his friend Daniel Greystone, the computer designer who will come to father the Cylons half a century or so before they wipe out the human colonies as seen at the outset of Battlestar Galactica.

Also included in the report are clues indicating that BSG fans will finally learn the origins of the Cylons’ monotheistic belief system (which stands opposite to the humans’ belief in multiple Gods on the show).

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Posted in Battlestar Galactica, Television •

Following the writers strike induced hiatus, NBC’s popular TV series Heroes is going back on air in September.

SCI FI Wire writes that the network will broadcast a full complement of 13 original episodes without repeats. Heroes returns to the schedule in its third season on September 15. An hour-long clip show will premiere at 8 p.m. ET/PT, with the extended two-hour season opener airing at 9 p.m., its regular timeslot.

Meanwhile, network executives have confirmed that the plug’s officially been pulled on the proposed prequel spin-off Heroes: Origins. “We were taxing our creative team to do too much around that,” NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman said. “We wanted 35 Heroes [episodes] and 12 Heroes: Origins, each of which was supposed to be a mini-movie and backdoor pilot. We reached far and challenged our people, and we decided it was better to focus on keeping the Heroes mothership as strong as possible.”

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Posted in Heroes, Television •

USA Today has published an extensive piece about their visit last week to the Chile set of the new James Bond flick Quantum of Solace, along with a couple of new stills (which we’ve made available in our movie gallery).

Setting up the film’s climax in Chile’s Atacama Desert fuses the plot with Bond’s internal life, director Marc Forster says in the article: “I chose the desert because it’s isolated, you feel lonely, and that’s what Bond is struggling with himself.” Bond actor Daniel Craig elaborates: “He has his heart broken. The love of his life is killed, and he finds out she’s not who she said she was. … He’s out for revenge. But he’s also out to find — and this is what the title is about — a ‘quantum of solace.’ Something has been taken away from him, and he’s out to get that back.”

The report also repeatedly mentions that the Olga Kurylenko played half-Russian, half-Bolivian spy Camille stands apart from other Bond girls as the only one who does not hook-up with Bond. Producer Michael G. Wilson explains: “We felt Bond could not immediately fall into another relationship. And we needed someone who had her own agenda and probably could not form a relationship either because of her situation.” In fact, apart from a one-night fling with fellow MI6 agent Fields (Gemma Arterton), the film is said to feature no romance at all.

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Posted in James Bond, Movies •

LucasArts has finally announced the official release date for the repeatedly delayed Star Wars video game The Force Unleashed.

The anxiously awaited X-Box 360, PS3&PS2, PSP, Nintendo DS and Wii title will be released on September 16 in the United States, September 17 in Southeast Asia and Australia, and September 19 in Europe. Exclusive new gameplay footage will be aired during Spike TV’s two-weekend broadcast of all six Star Wars movies this month (you can learn the exact times on StarWars.com).

An entirely new chapter in the Star Wars Saga, The Force Unleashed casts players as Darth Vader’s “Secret Apprentice” and promises to unveil new revelations about the Star Wars galaxy. The game’s expansive story is set during the largely unexplored era between Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. In it, players will assist Vader in his quest to rid the universe of Jedi — and face decisions that could change the course of their destiny.

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Posted in Sci-Tech & Video Games, Star Wars •

Over a year after the plug was pulled on the Halo film project that Peter Jackson was set to produce, new hope has been breathed into a potential franchise based on the best-selling video game.

According to Latino Review, Australian screenwriter Stuart Beattie (Collateral, 30 Days of Night, Australia) has written a new Halo script based on Eric Nylund’s first book tie-in, the prequel Halo: The Fall of Reach. The new project is apparently set up as a trilogy to coincide with the three X-Box titles. Beattie also wrote the screenplay for the upcoming G.I. Joe film and the Gears of War video game adaptation.

The site’s source writes: “The script is, first and foremost, a character-driven story about a soldier named John who was kidnapped or “conscripted” by the UNSC when he was just six years old, and then brutally trained to become an elite Spartan warrior known as Master Chief 117. The script then takes us through the horrific first contact with the Covenant hordes on the doomed colony world of Harvest, and then climaxes with the spectacular fall of the UNSC forward base on Reach, during which every other Spartan is slaughtered.”

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Posted in Movies •

No less than 40 behind-the-scenes pictures from Sin City-director Frank Miller’s film adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit have appeared on Dark Horizons.

The high-quality shots offer us our first glimpses at all the main characters in costume: Sam Jackson as a flamboyant Dr. Octopus, Gabriel Macht’s masked hero, femme fatale Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes as the sexy Sand Saref, Paz Vega as the deadly Plaster of Paris, and Sarah Paulson as the Police Commissioner’s daughter.

The site concedes that it may be forced to remove the leaked images at the studio’s behest, so you better grab em while you can. The film premieres in early 2009.

UPDATE: The images have been removed as per the request of Lionsgate.

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Posted in Movies •

The full trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II - The Golden Army has gone online on Yahoo! Movies.

The sequel revolves around the breaking of an an ancient truce existing between humankind and the invisible realm of the fantastic. A ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below defies his bloodline and awakens an unstoppable army of creatures. Now, it’s up to Hellboy (Ron Perlman) to battle the merciless dictator and his marauders.

The film hits cinemas July 11, 2008.

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