Geek Report »

Hey all! Since our last report, a few new Cine-staff members have joined the mix, plus we're pleased to announce that the official Cinematical Twitter account is new and improved. Up till now it's just been a basic RSS feed, but now it'll be a more streamlined (once an hour) feed, plus an infusion of random fun from myself and Erik Davis. If you're a flick junkie who likes to be up-to-date on all the news, reviews, and casting to-dos, then Twitter has lots of great resources. We hope to be one of your favorites.

And if you'd like to follow the personal ramblings of your favorite Cinematical scribes, you can do so thusly: Jessica Barnes, Monika Bartyzel, Erik Davis, William Goss, Kevin Kelly, Jette Kernion, Peter Martin, Jenni Miller, Eugene Novikov, Elisabeth Rappe, Nick Schager, Eric Snider, Dawn Taylor, Scott Weinberg (Still holding out: Jeffrey Anderson, Matt Bradshaw, and Todd Gilchrist!) Also worth a follow: Moviefone!

Feedback regarding Cinematical's Twitter presence is, of course, highly welcome. Especially nice stuff. See you @Cinematical!

Do you love Will Goss? Maybe you have a weird crush on Peter Martin? Do you dream of reading the brain droppings of cinematic sirens like Lisa Rappe. Monika Bartyzel, and Jessica Barnes? Perhaps you just have to know if Eric Snider is always so damn pithy, if Erik Davis ever sleeps, or if Eugene Novikov is actually a lawyer. Well now you can! Thanks to the new-fangled magic of the website Twitter, you can now pick and choose between your favorite Cinematical scribes and "follow" them accordingly. (I say collect 'em all.)

But just to make things a little bit handier ... links! I'll go alphabetically, because I'd win if we were going by height.

Jeffrey M. Anderson // Jessica Barnes // Monika Bartyzel // Matt Bradshaw // Erik Davis // William Goss // Kevin Kelly // Jette Kernion // Peter Martin // Eugene Novikov // Elisabeth Rappe // Nick Schager // Eric D. Snider // Scott Weinberg

So there you go. The "unlinked" writers are those I'm still checking on. Both those others, boy, they twit, tweet, and twizott all over the place. Feel free to leave your own Twitter handle in the comments section if you'd like to make some new friends. And don't feel bad if we don't necessarily "follow" you back. We read a LOT of stuff every dang day.

NOTE: Cinematical is not affiliated with Twitter, or its parent company Satan the Time Vacuum, but we're all helplessly addicted to sharing our collective cranium detritus in one nifty location. Plus people argue all the time!

Is "bobble-head" hyphenated? Someone remind me to ask Professor Rocchi. Anyway, collecting is fun. Especially if you're collecting things that make you happy. Like, for example, rare stamps or old coins or small bits of latex that were (allegedly) used in the original Giger face-hugger puppet. Kids love to collect action figures, comic books, and (I'm told) Barbie dolls, but we tend to get a little more discerning with our dollars as we get older. In other words, we quickly learn the value of a buck and therefore spend our "collectibles" allowance a lot more smartly. Hopefully.

But that's it. It's official. I'm definitely starting a bobble-head collection. No, not Dwight Schrute (although that one's hilarious) and not Mike Schmidt either -- but I'm going to devote two or three shelves to some of these toys. They're cheap, they're nifty, they work as simple "mini-statues," but they also elicit a chuckle from nerds who flick on the head part. Bobble-heads are A-OK in my book, and most of these nerdly treats were introduced to me by a website called Entertainment Earth. Yes, they get a free plug because they have more flick-related collectibles and novelties than I'd know what to do with. Plus they emailed me at just the the right time and gave me this bobbly new epiphany. So check out the bouncy gallery below, but feel free to click through the EE website -- and prepare to get your nerd on. (Additional BHs were found at ToyLounge.com, Graphitti Designs, and NecaOnline.com. Special thanks to E-Rappe for the pic help and Tom for the gallery!)

David Gordon Green became an indie darling with contemplative films like George Washington and All the Real Girls, then proved his diversity in 2008 by directing another quiet drama, Snow Angels, as well as the raucous stoner adventure Pineapple Express. People have gone from asking "What can Green do?" to "What can't Green do?," and we're about to get some more data to help us find an answer. Next up: a horror thriller based on a comic book miniseries.

It's called Freaks of the Heartland, and it's a six-part story published in 2004 by Dark Horse Comics (Portland represent!) about a boy in a small town who must protect his younger brother from people who view him as a monster. There's a good chance the townsfolk are right about the monster thing, however, and it apparently applies to some other local children, too. It's not what I first thought of when I saw the title Freaks of the Heartland (this was), but it sounds pretty cool.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Overture Films has hired Green to direct, with a screenplay adaptation by Peter Sattler and Geoff Davey, both of whom, like Green, are alumni of the North Carolina School of the Arts. The comic was written by Steve Niles (who also wrote 30 Days of Night), and he will be executive producer. Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson and Green will produce.

But hey! What about the fantasy comedy, Your Highness, that Green was supposed to make with his buddy Danny McBride? Is that still happening? That's a good question, and the answer is I dunno. I can't find any updates on that project since the original announcement in May. If Mr. Green is reading this and would like to contact me to clear things up, and also to listen to me gush about how brilliant I think he is, he is welcome to do so.

Would you believe us if we told you that David Prowse, the 6-foot-7 man who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, now runs a nudist colony in the South of France? Or that Kenny Baker, the 3-foot-8 actor who played R2-D2, was recently arrested for drunk driving? Or that the 7-foot-2 Peter Mayhew (a.k.a. Chewbacca) has renounced his native Britain and officially considers himself a citizen of the planet Kashyyyk?

One of these bits is actually true, and you can find which in Moviefone's Where Are They Now? feature, arriving as Star Wars fans everywhere (but especially in Los Angeles) celebrate the original film's 30th anniversary. Turns out most of these folks are keeping busy beyond the royalty checks and frequent conventions... then again some of them just stick to the conventions.

It looks like Sony is more serious than we thought about pressing ahead with their mega-bucks Spiderman franchise, whether Tobey, Kirsten, or Sam decide to return or not. Variety is reporting this morning that after seeing the first cut of Spiderman 3, Columbia execs have immediately conducted a sit-down with scribe David Koepp about penning the next installment. If Koepp, who is also in the news lately for having turned in an accepted draft for the next installment in the Indiana Jones series, does sign on to the project, he will presumably replace Alvin Sargent, who wrote Spiderman 2 and Spiderman 3. Koepp of course, was the man responsible for writing the first Spiderman, way back in 2002, as well as other giant-budget pieces like War of the Worlds, Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible. Variety also reports that Columbia would plan on dropping the film in theaters sometime in 2009 or 2010.

The piece also notes the obvious -- that bringing together the entire team for another round of Spidey might be outrageously expensive. Dunst has publicly gone on record as being less than over-the-moon about doing more Spiderman films, and similar noise has come from the camps of some of the other major players. Columbia might just decide that this is the time for a fresh start.

Hey, 2007, nice to meet you. I hear you're really into movies -- what a surprise, so am I. Maybe we can be friends. I'll admit to you that I'm just a bit wary of really getting to know you, because your buddy 2006 wasn't so awesome in his geek movie credentials. I mean, dude talked a good game, but he didn't really come through.

At first, I was very excited to meet him. He was all like "Holy crap, the X-Men rule. I just totally dig those mutants. I'm a huge fan." Two past years had delivered strong on the X-Men front, so I was pleased and excited. And he did bring some fun, but mostly his junk just felt like a mishmash of things he thought would look cool. It was like he'd trolled through some old comic books and cartoons, picked out everything he thought was popular, and smushed it all together. Dude didn't really know the X-Men, he was just a poser with some scattered knowledge.

When some studio announced its intent to turn Red Sonja into a film again, I got to thinking. We all know Red Sonja has been a film before, but the likelihood is of course very high the studio will ignore this previous (and very failed) attempt and start all over again, rather than pulling a direct sequel 20 years later. Everyone involved, especially the fans, are happy with this idea. We have no problem ignoring the first incarnation of the story on film and treating the new version as a stand alone -- something akin to a restart of the story. And this concept is not at all unusual to comic book movie fans who've survived some pretty crappy attempts through the years and patiently waited for the current age of the comic book movie.

Hi. It looks like you and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other, now that this snazzy new weekly column deal is happening. If that's the case, we've got to lay down some ground rules so we know where we stand. Here's how it is going to be:

Rule 1 - The movie business is driven by opinion, not fact; and the geek business doubly so. I'm going to say some things you disagree with - and at some point I'll probably insult something you like. I'm an opinionated guy, and I tend to think I'm right about everything. But let's be fair, you know you do the same. If it makes you feel better, feel free to hate/make fun of things that I like if you ever feel slighted. I'll even provide a list of possible topics.

Rule 2 - A good relationship is built on open conversation. See that comment option down there? Use it. Use it like Popeye uses spinach. I want to know what you are interested in, and I want to know when you disagree with me. Sure I'm a writer - but I'm only one geek among millions - and you've all got opinions as legitimate as my own.

Rule 3 - I'm allowed to make new rules at any time, and break them at will. It IS my column, after all.

Everyone's favorite homicidal computer - Arthur C. Clarke's H.A.L. 9000 from his book 2001: A Space Odyssey - turns 9 years old today. A 2003 inductee into the Robot Hall Of Fame (along with R2-D2 from Star Wars), H.A.L. murdered the crew of the spaceship Discovery in Clarke's book and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film (where a possible flubbed line had the maniacal machine born five years earlier). H.A.L. stands for "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer", with "Heuristic" and "Algorithmic" being two primary processes of intelligence, as the RHF website notes.

Everyone's second favorite homicidal computer - a network (much like Al Gore's Internet) called SkyNet from James Cameron's The Terminator - turns 9 on August 29.