Friday, May 29, 2009

Plan Your Weekend


Saturday night on Sci-Fi watch James Callis in Book of Beasts.

My associate, Proggrrl recently noted that on Sunday May 31 Bear McCreary will be in Burbank, at Dark Delicacies signing pre-release CDs of his OST for Caprica. (The CD officially comes out in a few weeks.)

As Bear states on his blog:

The first copies of my Caprica score go on sale this Sunday, May 31st at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, CA. I will be taking part in a massive signing that also includes legendary genre composers Christopher Young, Michael Giacchino, Stu Phillips, Mark Isham, Wendy and Lisa, Ron Jones, Ken Thorne, Geoff Zandelli, John Murphy, John Harrison and Richard Band. Holy Cow! What a crowd! :)

I will also be signing Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the first three Battlestar Galactica CDs.

DARK DELICACIES
4213 W. Burbank Blvd., Burbank, CA 91505
Sunday, May 31st, 2008, 2pm
www.darkdel.com

Come by and pick up an advance copy of Caprica weeks before the official June 16th release date. Also, you can order signed copies from the Dark Delicacies website and still have them signed to you personally.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Mega Con



Video from MegaCon via Codebreaker2001.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Friday, May 15, 2009

Robot Ethics: Military Robots in Iraq and Afghanistan

Last week, Logan included this link to an excellent Reuters article at the bottom of a long post full of links. Many of you, like me, might have missed it altogether. I caught it on my second read, and I'm really glad I did, because somehow I had no idea that in the all-of-this-has-happened-before timeline, we're about three years from the Cylon uprising. The technology exists, tens of thousands of military robots equipped with lethal weapons and the ability to make autonomous decisions about when to use them have been deployed in conflict sites around the world... and so now we just wait for things to go terribly terribly wrong. Which personally I find really exciting.

The story relies heavily on the report Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design, prepared by California Polytechnic for the US Navy Office of Naval Research. The report summarizes most of the military robot development of the past six years, and breaks down some of the current and potential ethical dilemmas that are inescapable whenever we have autonomous or semi-autonomous machines equipped with lethal weaponry…

It’s a huge document, and consistently fascinating. Here are some highlights from the first 25 pages… more excerpts, and maybe even my summary thoughts, will follow, both here and on my own website.

=========================================================

“Technology, however, is a double‐edge sword with both benefits and risks, critics and advocates; and autonomous military robotics is no exception, no matter how compelling the case may be to pursue such research. The worries include: where responsibility would fall in cases of unintended or unlawful harm, which could range from the manufacturer to the field commander to even the machine itself; the possibility of serious malfunction and robots gone wild; capturing and hacking of military robots that are then unleashed against us; lowering the threshold for entering conflicts and wars, since fewer US military lives would then be at stake; the effect of such robots on squad cohesion, e.g., if robots recorded and reported back the soldier’s every action; refusing an otherwise‐legitimate order; and other possible harms.”

“First, in this investigation, we are not concerned with the question of whether it is even technically possible to make a perfectly‐ethical robot, i.e., one that makes the ‘right’ decision in every case or even most cases. Following Arkin, we agree that an ethically‐infallible machine ought not to be the goal now (if it is even possible); rather, our goal should be more practical and immediate: to design a machine that performs better than humans do on the battlefield, particularly with respect to reducing unlawful behavior or war crimes [Arkin, 2007]. Considering the number of incidences of unlawful behavior—and by ‘unlawful’ we mean a violation of the various Laws of War (LOW) or Rules of Engagement (ROE), which we also will discuss later in more detail—this appears to be a low standard to satisfy, though a profoundly important hurdle to clear.”

“it is surprising to note that one of the most comprehensive and recent reports on military robotics, Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007‐2032, does not mention the word ‘ethics’ once nor risks raised by robotics, with the exception of one sentence that merely acknowledges that “privacy issues [have been] raised in some quarters” without even discussing said issues [US Department of Defense, 2007, p. 48].”

In a military context, a robot is “a powered machine that (1) senses, (2) thinks (in a deliberative, non‐mechanical sense), and (3) acts.” “And robots can be considered as agents, i.e., they have the capacity to act in a world, and some even may be moral agents, as discussed in the next definition.”

“the US Army Surgeon General’s Office had surveyed US troops in Iraq on issues in battlefield ethics and discovered worrisome results. From its summary of findings, among other statistics: “Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non‐combatants should be treated with respect and dignity and well over a third believed that torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow team member. About 10% of Soldiers and Marines reported mistreating an Iraqi non‐combatant when it wasn’t necessary…Less than half of Soldiers and Marines would report a team member for unethical behavior…Although reporting ethical training, nearly a third of Soldiers and Marines reported encountering ethical situations in Iraq in which they didn’t know how to respond” [US Army Surgeon General’s Office, 2006]. The most recent survey by the same organization reported similar results [US Army Surgeon General’s Office, 2008]. Wartime atrocities have occurred since the beginning of human history, so we are not operating under the illusion that they can be eliminated altogether (nor that armed conflicts can be eliminated either, at least in the foreseeable future). However, to the extent that military robots can considerably reduce unethical conduct on the battlefield—greatly reducing human and political costs—there is a compelling reason to pursue their development as well as to study their capacity to act ethically.”

“Perhaps robot ethics has not received the attention it needs, at least in the US, given a common misconception that robots will do only what we have programmed them to do. Unfortunately, such a belief is a sorely outdated, harking back to a time when computers were simpler and their programs could be written and understood by a single person. Now, programs with millions of lines of code are written by teams of programmers, none of whom knows the entire program; hence, no individual can predict the effect of a given command with absolute certainty, since portions of large programs may interact in unexpected, untested ways. (And even straightforward, simple rules such as Asimov’s Laws of Robotics can create unexpected dilemmas [e.g., Asimov, 1950].) Furthermore, increasing complexity may lead to emergent behaviors, i.e., behaviors not programmed but arising out of sheer complexity [e.g., Kurzweil, 1999, 2005].”

“Related major research efforts also are being devoted to enabling robots to learn from experience, raising the question of whether we can predict with reasonable certainty what the robot will learn… Learning may enable the robot to respond to novel situations, given the impracticality and impossibility of predicting all eventualities on the designer’s part. Thus, unpredictability in the behavior of complex robots is a major source of worry, especially if robots are to operate in unstructured environments…”

“Now, technical advances in robotics are catching up to literary and theatrical accounts, so the seeds of worry that have long been planted in the public consciousness will grow into close scrutiny of the robotics industry with respect to those ethical issues…”

“The South Korean [sentry robot] is capable of interrogating suspects, identifying potential enemy intruders, and autonomous firing of its weapon.”

“… as of this writing, none of the fielded systems has full autonomy in a wide context. Many are capable of autonomous navigation, localization, station keeping, reconnaissance and other activities, but rely on human supervision to fire weapons, launch missiles, or exert deadly force by other means; and even the Navy’s CIWS operates in full‐auto mode only as a reactive last line of defense against incoming missiles and does not proactively engage an enemy or target. Clearly, there are fundamental ethical implications in allowing full autonomy for these robots. Among the questions to be asked are:
• Will autonomous robots be able to follow established guidelines of the Laws of War and Rules of Engagement, as specified in the Geneva Conventions?
• Will robots know the difference between military and civilian personnel?
• Will they recognize a wounded soldier and refrain from shooting?”

“We anticipate that autonomy will be granted to robot vehicles gradually, as confidence in their ability to perform their assigned tasks grows. Further, we expect to see learning algorithms that enable the robot to improve its performance during training missions. Even so, there will be fundamental ethical issues. For example, will a supervising warfighter be able to override a robot’s decision to fire? If so, how much time will have to be allocated to allow such decisions? Will the robot have the ability to disobey a human supervisor’s command, say in a situation where the robot makes the decision not to release a missile on the basis that its analysis leads to the conclusion that the number of civilians (say women and children) greatly exceeds the number of insurgents in the house?”

Thursday, May 14, 2009

BSG Epic



Vidder Freelancerxo02 has created a masterwork of awesomeness.

Also check out this video by Trailorz:

James Callis on Num3ers


The site, sfuniverse reports:

Battlestar Galactica’s James Callis, aka Gaius Baltar will be creating a little havoc for Don and the team on the season finale of Numb3rs. Callis is playing a “charismatic sociopath” who kidnaps someone very close to Charlie making this crime more personal than ever!

It all happens on Friday, May 15 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

I wonder if he gets a harem in the episode?

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Bear



Bear McCreary recently announced his summer schedule of BSG concerts, including a free event in downtown L.A.

Auction Reports


Reports indicate that the BSG props auction was a great event. Check out photos from the events here and here.

Michael Trucco and Kate Vernon attended the event and spoke about working on The Plan.

See also, the Battlestar Blog.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Go to the Auction


The second Battlestar Props and Costume Auction begins on May 8th through the 10th, but Thursday the 7th is preview day, along with several panels. Bear McCreary previews his panel event on his blog. Also scheduled to appear on the 5 p.m. actors panel are: Grace Park, Michael Trucco, Kate Vernon and Luciana Carro. Bear will be a part of the 6:00 p.m. Production Executive Panel:

* Daniel Colman - Emmy-nominated and MPSE Award-winning Sound Designer will demonstrate the impact of sound on the BSG experience.
* Harvey Frand - Producer
* Gary Hutzel - Emmy and VES Award-winning VFX Supervisor will demonstrate the visual effects process
* Paul Leonard - Co-Producer will present an overview of the post production process.
* Bear McCreary - Composer will present a behind the scenes look at the making of a score
* Michael Nankin - Director of Maelstrom, Scar, Sometimes a Great Notion and Someone to Watch Over Me, will present his personal collection of 3D behind the scenes photos.
* Wayne Rose - Director of Blood on the Scales, Emmy winner for Razor Webisodes and Streamy winner for Face of the Enemy Webisodes
* Andy Seklir - Associate Producer and Editor
* Bradley Thompson - Supervising Producer and Co-Writer of Maelstrom, Scar, Sometimes A Great Notion, Someone To Watch Over Me and Revelations
* David Weddle - Supervising Producer and Co-Writer of Maelstrom, Scar, Sometimes A Great Notion, Someone To Watch Over Me and Revelations


Order the auction catalog, (or download the catalog PDF) and read their FAQ for more information.

Red Eye Chicago, and TV Squad have more information as well.

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Star Trek Fever







Star Trek is getting rave reviews from everywhere from The NY Daily News, to Variety and the Hollywood Reporter becoming the best reviewed Star Trek film ever.

The best Star Trek site, Trek Movie, is keeping tabs on everything. They recently reported on several Trek tie-ins on Fringe. (Just as Abrams' other series, Lost, had a preview last week.)

Trek Movie also has a handy media page with all the recently released Star Trek clips.

So, visit Trek Movie for all the latest Trek news, along with their new interviews with the Star Trek cast.

Also check out their review of season one of The Original Series on Blu-ray.

Matt and Nat from the BSG Cast video podcast, have a preview of Trek as well.

Even Mojo admits to catching Star Trek fever:

It was only a few short weeks ago that I firmly stood my ground that this new movie was going to suck. The pretty-boy cast, the Apple store bridge and JJ Abrams bragging about the “powerhouse writing team of MI:3 and Transformers” were just a few of the reasons I felt we were in for little more than two hours of action movie cliches and mindless visual effects.

But then there was the surprise “Wrath of Khan” showing in Texas; that surprised me big time. Studios simply do not have public screenings a month in advance unless they are sure they have a winner. And to an audience of die-hard Trek fans? That takes a serious pair of transparent aluminum balls.

Now the mainstream press reviews are trickling in and they have been overwhelmingly positive. Have Paramount pulled a fast one on us? Did they manage to very carefully plant the seeds of lowered expectations, only now to watch us gasp in awe as a towering tree of almighty Star Trek springs from the ground?

Whatever the outcome, for the first time I’m letting myself get excited. Maybe I’ll regret it but, for now, it’s fun to be an optomistic Star Trek fan again!


Live long and prosper, everybody.

Caprica Reviewed

Reviews of the pilot ep of Caprica, available now on DVD:

Mo Ryan, Chicago Tribune:

“Caprica,” even more than “Battlestar,” is an examination of how greed, selfishness, heedlessness and pain prompt people to use technology to avoid difficult situations.

Technology isn’t really the problem; the trouble comes from our belief that we can always control it and use it to keep life from hurting too much or being too hard. Yet anyone who has ever tried to set up a balky new device or felt oppressed by the constant presence of a BlackBerry knows that things that are supposed to make our lives better don’t always do so.

....One reason Sci Fi is making "Caprica" -- and starting a promotional campaign early by releasing the DVD months before the show arrives -- is because the network wants to catch the attention of viewers who may not be regular viewers of sci-fi fare. There are no space ships and no outer-space battles in this new show, which is set 58 years before the events of "Battlestar"; the world of Caprica looks much like our own.

With any luck, "Caprica" won't have to battle the perception problems that "Battlestar Galactica" faced; it took a couple of seasons for the latter show to get people to realize that it was a taut, bold and thought-provoking study of the heights and depths of human nature, not a superficial remake of a '70s show about robots and the swashbuckling heroes who fought them.

Still, hard-core "Battlestar" fans should be aware that these are different shows. Ronald D. Moore, an executive producer and co-creator of the new show, has been upfront about calling "Caprica" a prime-time "soap opera" (for a few more of Moore's "Caprica" comments look here). It's not about life during wartime; it's about the sacrifices, mistakes and fateful decisions made by individuals, corporations and families.

“Battlestar” has “come to an end, and it’s a beautiful end and [fans] should mourn that show,” Malcolmson said in a March interview. “You can’t just come along with another show that’s going to replicate it. That’s not what we want to do, we want to give them something else.”

The good news for "Battlestar" fans is that show's outstanding composer, Bear McCreary, and special-effects wizard, Gary Hutzel, are part of the new venture. And several of that show's writers will be on "Caprica's" creative staff as well.

Jane Espenson, a co-executive producer who is set to become "Caprica's" day-to-day showrunner, said in January that the new show "will certainly be different, but it's like a different garment made from the same fabric. The beating heart of it will be the same -- complex moral situations, high stakes, compelling characters. Robots."

Thomas Rogers for Salon says, "Frak This Prequel":
In an unconventional launch strategy, SyFy has just released the one-and-a-half-hour pilot episode of the show on DVD and digital download (the actual series won't premiere on television until 2010). Described by blogs as "'Dallas' in space," "Caprica" is, indeed, a very different beast from its mother series. Planet-bound, slow-paced and with hardly any action scenes, the series is primarily a melodrama about two families on the planet Caprica (one of the 12 home planets of the human race in the "Battlestar" universe) as they overcome a personal tragedy. It also, of more interest to science fiction fans, tells the story of the birth of the Cylons, the race of robots who, as we learned in "Battlestar," eventually become hell-bent on destroying all human life.

The drama builds slowly, and scenes unfold without much, if any, tension. What little tension it has owes to viewers' knowledge of what will happen 58 years later. There are no hostage crises or food shortages to resolve, since the show's main concern is the emotional state of its two families. In fact, robot subplot and holographic excursions aside, there really isn't much that’s science fiction-y about "Caprica."

...Unfortunately, "Caprica" doesn't make for tremendously engaging melodrama either, largely because it doesn't have any characters as immediately riveting as Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck or Mary McDonnell's President Roslin. Eric Stoltz brings quiet soulfulness to his grieving father, but Esai Morales feels wooden and stilted as Adama, and the rest of the ensemble (especially, it has to be said, the child actors) aren't a particularly inspiring bunch. As for the show's visuals -- unlike "Battlestar," "Caprica" is filmed largely with fixed shots (no hand-held cameras), which robs it of much of its flair and immediacy. Its clean urban setting feels antiseptic and cold and a bit dull. Judging by the pilot, the planet Caprica is Vancouver with a fancier train system.

In the spirit of "Battlestar," "Caprica" also references a number of real-world topical issues: Adama is a member of a disliked immigrant group called the Tauron, and during their investigation of the bombing, the authorities become suspicious of a certain religious minority. But while "Battlestar's" space-bound setting was strange and destabilizing enough to make its political allusions seem fresh -- one of the joys of the series was seeing it fragment and rearrange issues like abortion and terrorism to make provocative arguments -- in "Caprica," they merely feel awkward. It's obvious that Tauron is a stand-in for Mexico (there's even a subplot about Tauronese gangs) and monotheism a replacement for Islam -- but there's nothing new to be learned here by renaming things.

When the show premieres on television next year it could take off in some interesting and unexpected directions. The show’s writing is fairly strong (one of the debut episode's co-writers, Jane Espenson, was responsible for many of "Battlestar's" best shows), and SyFy clearly has a lot of faith in creator Ronald Moore. But given the high expectations that "Battlestar" fans have for the series, and the tepidness of this initial offering, I wonder how many will come back to find out what happens in 2010.

Alan Sepinwall Star Ledger:
TV series finales don't get much more polarizing than the end of "Battlestar Galactica." (Spoilers flying at you in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...) For every fan who found the finale a moving and appropriate capper to a great series, there was at least one who felt betrayed that producer Ronald D. Moore chose to ascribe many key developments in the series to divine intervention, or that he had the surviving colonists decide to throw away all their technology upon arriving on a primitive Earth.

As one commenter on my blog put it, "Ron ruined the last five years of my life ...god, why?"

Today's DVD release of "Caprica," the two-hour pilot episode for a "Galactica" prequel series, might be just as polarizing, even among the people who liked the end of "Galactica."

...It's an attempt to open up the franchise to viewers who would never watch a show with the title "Battlestar Galactica," or one where all the characters live on spaceships. But like Sci Fi Channel's larger attempts to attract new viewers -- starting with the pending name change to the much sillier SyFy (if you're going to change the name, change the name) -- it feels like something that may wind up seeming too foreign for both potential new fans and old ones.

"Caprica" is intriguing, don't get me wrong. The most frustrating part of watching the DVD was knowing that Sci Fi (or SyFy) won't be airing the series until 2010, when this is a show that begs for a second episode to evaluate. But while it's good, it's (deliberately) not "Galactica."

"Caprica" grapples with many of the contemporary dilemmas that "Galactica" handled -- religious strife, terrorism, overreliance on technology -- but, in placing them in a world that looks like the one outside our window, it can be blunter about it. The holo-band nightclub where Zoe and her friends meet in secret -- an online Sodom and Gomorrah, filled with (virtual) sex, drugs and even human sacrifice -- is like every parent's worst nightmare about what his kids are up to on Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the web. And by casting all of the prominent Tauran characters immigrants with Latin actors (and the Capricans with whites), it emphasizes the race and class distinctions in a way that "Galactica" couldn't with its use of Cylons as stand-ins for Muslim extremists.

The performances by Stoltz and Morales - two actors who tend to come across as bland in certain roles - are extremely strong. And the direction by "Friday Night Lights" veteran Jeffrey Reiner, coupled with work by the familiar "Galactica" production team, creates an absolutely gorgeous-looking pilot episode.

Moore initially pitched "Caprica" as "a sci-fi version of 'Dallas,'" and while the show has moved well beyond that initial template -- among other things, it adds an organized crime component -- there's enough soap opera sheen left, coupled with the planet-bound setting, that I wonder how many "Galactica" fans will stick with it.

Science fiction used to be a catch-all term for any kind of story featuring technology or worlds not quite our own, but in recent years, the definition has narrowed until its only meaning for some fans is "outer space action." It's that kind of thinking that led Sci Fi execs to want to change their channel's name, but I fear too many fanboys won't want any part of a show that trades the interplanetary combat of "Galactica" for healthy doses of teen rebellion and legal intrigue. And I also have no idea if people who refused to watch "Galactica" would ever watch a spin-off, even one that looks more soap than space opera.

And because of the huge lag between DVD release and TV premiere, we have a long time to find out how many people might come back for a second episode.


Christopher Schwartz:
Taut, introspective, and very, very adult; much more mature than its predecessor series, which is saying a lot — Caprica is brimming with potential. Where Battlestar Galactica, quite controversially, seemed to return to its Mormon theological roots, Caprica, although set 58 years prior to the events of the original show, seems to be reaching forward toward the Techological Singularity prophecied by futurists since the 1950s. Questions about morality and belief, the value (and undermining) of family and multicultural democracy, and the nature of humanity and transhumanity, abound in a dense hour and thirty minutes.

Lewis Wallace, Wired:
In the “uncut and unrated” Caprica pilot, there are no nuclear explosions, no grimy spaceships, no sexy or deadly encounters with robotic Cylons.

Aside from a bloody assassination and some gratuitous topless shots, the show almost completely lacks the action and hard-edged sci-fi eye candy that helped give Galactica its gritty appeal.

Instead, Caprica delivers a broad, deliberately paced introduction to the themes that will presumably drive the show: the tension between science and religion, the dangers of religious zealotry, the racism that can simmer in a societal melting pot, the nature of humanity in a world filled with sentient machines.

...Set 58 years before the Cylons’ sneak attack on humanity, the Caprica pilot does not deliver the kind of explosive action that turned Galactica into a nail-biting sensation. Instead, it is a little like the “begat”-riddled genealogical sequence that opens the New Testament: It draws much of its tension from the knowledge of what lies ahead.

The characters are richly drawn and ripe for further exploration. And the show’s willingness to tackle religion, immigration, corporate espionage and racism right out of the gate indicates that Moore is framing up another thoughtful sci-fi series.

Caprica could become another sacred text for sci-fi fans yearning for brainy television.

Other reviews and observations from: The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, NBC LA, Winnipeg Sun, Monsters and Critics, Complex Blog, Deseret News, Airlock Alpha, Philadelphia Daily News, The Jackson Sun, IGN, io9, Jimmy Akin, Motion Pictures Comics.Com, the Vancouver Sun, The Boston Herald, TrulyObscure, TrekWeb, and The House Next Door.

Televisionary talked to Caprica showrunner Jane Espenson. Ron Moore talked to The Insider. The Futon Critic reports on the Caprica Paley Fest event. Sci-Fi Wire has cast arrivals at that event. Actress Magda Apanowicz of Caprica spoke with The Ampersand and Hello Magazine.

Reuters examines killer robots.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Excuse My French

hobbitofkobol has a ton of great videos from the recent Jules Verne Festival in Paris, including video of the main BSG event with James Callis, Jamie Bamber, and Mary McDonnell. And an exclusive interview with Mary McDonnell.

Ron Moore Tonight


Reminder, tonight Ronald D. Moore appears at the Writers Guild Theatre for the Writer's Guild Foundation Writers on Writing event:

AN EVENING with RONALD D. MOORE
Tuesday, May 5 - 7:30-9:30pm - At the Writers Guild Theater (135 S Doheny Dr., 90211)
Moderated by Jeff Greenstein
Light reception included

Join us for this unique opportunity to learn from the writer, developer, and excecutive producer of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA... one of the most successful sci-fi series in a frakkin' long time.
Ronald D. Moore is one of the most successful writers of television science fiction working today. He is writer/executive producer of Battlestar Galactica. Previous writing and producing credits include Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Good Vs. Evil, Roswell, and the acclaimed HBO series Carnivale. He is the winner of two Peabody Awards, an Emmy (plus many nominations) and a Hugo Award, as well as a WGA nomination.

Purchase tickets here.
$20, $15-WGA, $10-Student (prices slightly discounted online) or call 800-838-3006

Also of note, on the writers of Star Trek will be at the venue later this month:
AN EVENING with ALEX KURTZMAN & ROBERTO ORCI (Star Trek, Transformers)
Tuesday, May 26 - 7:30-9:30pm - At the Writers Guild Theater (135 S Doheny Dr., 90211)
Light reception included

Join us for this special evening with one of the most succesful sci-fi/action writing teams in the business.

Kurtzman & Orci reunited after college to write for the popular television series Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess, where they quickly became head writers at the age of 23.

In 2003, the two were approached to write for J.J. Abrams wildly popular television spy thriller Alias, and eventually ascended to be executive producers of the show.

Kurtzman and Orci also created the current FOX drama Fringe with Abrams.

In the film sphere, Kurtzman and Orci made a splash with the sci-fi thriller The Island, their feature film debut helmed by Michael Bay. Late 2005 saw the release of The Legend of Zorro, while in 2006, the duo re-teamed with Abrams to write the third installment of Mission: Impossible. 2007 saw the pair write Transformers, a live-action adaptation of the popular animated series.

More recently, the two are the authors of the blockbuster Star Trek, slated for a May, 2009 release with J.J. Abrams directing. The pair has written their own fresh take on the classic show, and are executive producers on the film.

Purchase tickets here.
$20, $15-WGA, $10-Student (prices slightly discounted online) or call 800-838-3006

Friday, May 01, 2009

Fan Vid



freelancerxo02 provides another impressive work.

A program note: I'll be posting a ton of Caprica reviews and other general news items within the coming days, so stay tuned for all of that, and more.