The 1981 R-rated animated feature Heavy Metal is now online to watch for free at Crackle.

Due to its rating, you have to sign in to watch it, but sign-up is free and quick and there’s even an option to sign in using your Facebook account (even quicker). While the movie is free to watch, it does have periodic but quick commercial interruptions.

John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Harold Ramis, among others, voice the characters in this scifi animated film, based on the Heavy Metal magazine. The soundtrack is packed with great tunes from Stevie Nicks, Black Sabbath, Cheap Trick, and more, including the title track by Sammy Hagar.

Heavy Metal is one of my all-time favorite movies, and let me tell you, this was not an easy movie — or soundtrack — to come back in the ’80s and early ’90s, thanks to legal disputes surrounding the music rights, which prevented its release on video til the mid ’90s.

Sir Ian McKellen recently spoke to MTV while promoting his re-imagining of the 1967 mini-series The Prisoner. It did not take long before the conversation jumped to the obvious priority of all news seekers: Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson’s two-movie adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Topics discussed mainly hovered around his urge to return to the epic fantasy role that netted him an Academy Award nomination, the surprise arrival part of the script and the security lengths being taken to ensure its safety, and also his curiosity when it comes to del Toro and his directing methods.

McKellen states that he longs to become the “fantastic” Gandalf character again and can’t wait for production to start. He also speaks about how he and Jackson both preferred the original Gandalf the Grey character before he took on his god-like White persona. “He was more humane somehow. He was the guy who liked to hang out with the Hobbits and drink too much and smoke too much,” McKellen admits.

The Secret Saturdays
Volume 1-2
Created by Jay Stephens
Featuring the voices of Phil Morris, Nicole Sullivan, Diedrich Bader, Sam Lerner, Fred Tatasciore, Will Friedle, Corey Burton
Cartoon Network

The Cartoon Network’s The Secret Saturdays is a throwback cartoon that tips their hats off to various cartoons and genres of yesteryear. The cartoon focuses on the Saturday family, a team of crypto-zoologists (or scientists that search for strange creatures), as they go on adventures of exploration and various forms of daring-do. Along the way, they deal with their own rogue gallery of rival crypto-zoologists and various other supped up big baddies.

While I am definitely not the demographic for this cartoon, I must say that I actually enjoyed the cartoon a lot. I am a fan of mythical beasts like Bigfoot or The Loch Ness and I am glad to see an actual cartoon focused on it. The writing and overall tone of the series reminded me a lot of the old Hanna Barbera cartoons, mostly notably Johnny Quest. The creators also throw in a Fantastic Four vibe into the mix and that gels very nicely with the series as a whole (and with yours truly). There is definitely a lot of humor and action that is not family friendly but, I dare say it, adult friendly too.

The Gathering Storm
Written by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
Publisher: Tor Books
Released: October 27, 2009

It’s time for fans of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series to stand up and celebrate. The release of a new book is upon us. Even more than just a new book, this is the beginning of the end; the final book in the series. Okay, so there’s actually three books remaining, but they were meant by Jordan to be one book. Unfortunately (or perhaps, very fortunately depending on your point of view), the story became too large to release as one volume, so the editors decided to break the final book into three parts, the first of which, titled The Gathering Storm, saw release on October 27th, 2009, with the other two seeing release at a later date, hopefully in 2010 and 2011.

Unfortunately, the book split isn’t the big story about this release. No, the big story concerning this book was the untimely passing of original author Robert Jordan on September 16, 2007. With Jordan’s passing, many feared that we would never see the end to his sprawling series. Fortunately, Jordan had written a large portion of the book before his passing, and left detailed notes on the rest and writer Brandon Sanderson was quickly chosen by Jordan’s editor and wife to finish the series, putting fans’ minds at ease.

Wil Wheaton is something of a fanboy favorite for the people. He’s a former child star, best known as the lead in the Rob Reiner adaptation of Stephen King’s Stand by Me, and also as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He’s done tons of other stuff along with these two better-known titles, but the best thing about him is that he’s grown into a regular everyday guy and fan of many things geek, which puts him high on our list of coolest celebrities in the universe.

One thing that we didn’t know about Mr. Wheaton — and you probably didn’t know it either — is that he was actually in J.J. Abrams‘ Star Trek. That’s right, Wes Crusher of Next Generation was in the new Trek.

On the official Wil Wheaton blog, the actor and writer shared the whole story yesterday, and it is quite the amusing tale indeed. The interesting thing about the story is that apparently, Wheaton and Abrams decided that it would remain a sacred secret for all eternity, leaving only a special handful of chosen ones who would possess the truth. Eventually, Viacom found out and for some reason, declared that Wil had to be credited for the work — even with him agreeing to the secret and many “uncredited roles” already existing.

In yet another announcement regarding a classic cartoon character, it appears as though there is a Yogi Bear movie in the works, and it’s actually set to begin filming next month. Naturally, this will be another hybrid movie that will mix live-action humans with the former cartoons getting their CGI makeover.

This comes from an Entertainment Weekly report stating that there are three big names currently in negotiations to take the lead roles in the movie: Dan Aykroyd, Justin Timberlake, and Anna Faris. If these talks all work out in the end, Aykroyd would voice the picnic-addicted bear Yogi; Timberlake would take on his tiny little buddy Boo-Boo, and Faris would be playing a nature documentary film maker named Rachel that chooses the bears as her latest project.

A few months ago, William Shatner made an appearance on The Tonight Show to recite Sarah Palin’s tweets after the Alaska governor’s resignation.

Now, for the past two evenings, Shatner returned to the late night talk show to poetically recite the tweets of Levi Johnston, Palin’s teenager daughter’s baby daddy. In last night’s episode, host Conan O’Brien revealed that the first set of tweets was actually from Levi “imposter” account, therefore Shatner was brought back on to do a set of Levi’s quote that were verified.

Check out the videos here below of Shatner, accompanied by bass and bongos.

Also on the Shatner front, the actor best known as Captain James T. Kirk of Star Trek fame, unveiled his new Captain Kirk wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s on Hollywood Blvd in California on November 4, 2009. Check out the video of the event here below.

The figure is of the Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan Admiral Kirk character, which, according to a source obtained by Trek Movie, was the preference of CBS Paramount. Visit TrekMovie to view more pictures and read more details from the event.

Star Trek is coming to DVD, Blu-ray, and digital download on November 17, 2009.

Like with many big-name summer blockbusters, Star Trek is getting a few retail exclusive releases at select stores like Target and Best Buy. I don’t usually concern myself too much with different versions of DVDs, unless an exclusive strikes my interest. In this case, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek was my absolute favorite movie of the year (not surprising, since I’m a Trek fanatic), so naturally, I know how to think carefully on which version of the home entertainment release I’ll be choosing.

Check out the list of retail exclusives for the U.S. and Canada here below and feel free to help me decide which I’ll be getting! (I’m leaning towards the 3-Disc Blu-ray with Enterprise replica, though I really like those badge pins in the 3-disc Blu-ray from Best Buy.)

The follow-up to Frank Beddor’s Hatter M graphic novel series , Hatter M: Vol. 2: Mad With Wonder, was released last month along with his latest The Looking Glass Wars novel, ArchEnemy. Also, coming soon will be the online MMO card game Card Soldier Wars.

For this event, we here at Geeks of Doom have three (3) copies of Hatter M: Vol. 2: Mad With Wonder to give away to some lucky readers!

Three (3) winners will each receive:

• One (1) Hatter M: Vol. 2: Mad With Wonder graphic novel

What do you have to do to get a chance to win? Glad you asked ’cause it’s really easy. Just make sure you’re a subscriber to our email digest, and then go ahead and fill out the handy dandy form below. Done.

Good luck!

TO ENTER: There’s just two simple steps:

(1) Make sure you’re subscribed to the Geeks of Doom email digest. If you’re not then click here and sign up. (If you’re already a subscriber, then go right to the next step.)

(2) Fill out the entry form here below and submit. (Form is here after the jump.)

It seems like every post these days has a list-off of all of the toys and board games being made into movies, so we’re not even going to worry about it here. Now it’s being reported that Sony Pictures have acquired the rights to Hasbro’s strategy game, Risk, and will indeed be turning it into a movie. The game was created in 1957 by French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse. Who knows, maybe they can go to war with Universal’s Battleship movie! (Read: ‘Hancock’ Director Peter Berg To Helm ‘Battleship’ Movie; 2011 Release).

Once again, there isn’t really a storyline to Risk, so you have to imagine that this will ultimately just become some kind of a war movie in which nations battle for world domination. Two scenarios are most logical: in one, they could go back in time and create the movie within one of the first two World Wars; in the other, they could go futuristic and make a movie about World War III, which is probably the most likely of paths.

Law Abiding Citizen
Director F. Gary Gray
Starring Gerard Butler, Jaime Foxx, Colm Meaney
Rated R
Release date: October 16, 2009

I love stupid mindless revenge movies. Man on Fire, Payback, Taken; pretty much any movie where a guy is driven to kill as many people as necessary in the name of some kind of justice. Most of these movies are not what I would call great movies, but when done well, they’re all fun, and they appeal to a certain part of me that wishes that the kind of uncompromising justice portrayed in these films would work in the real world. The realistic part of me understands that it wouldn’t, but who wouldn’t like to see righteous justice handed down to those who deserve it. Law Abiding Citizen is now resides in a warm place in my heart along with the rest of these films. Is it perfect? Hardly. Does it have plot holes you could drive a truck through? Definitely. Is it going to win any kind of awards? Certainly not. Did I have a fun time watching it? Hell yeah! And sometimes, that’s enough for me.

In the film, Gerard Butler plays Clyde Shelton, a man who is forced to watch his wife and daughter brutally murdered in front of him, and then sees the justice system break down as the man who actually killed his family is given a reduced sentence so that callous District Attorney Nick Rice, played by Jaime Foxx, can keep his high conviction percentage. Unfortunately, Shelton is a very driven man who has the skill, intelligence, and determination to see his revenge through to the end. From there, we get the standard game of cat and mouse, as Clyde continually shows that he is smarter than Rice, as the bodies keep piling up in brutal fashion.

Sons of Anarchy S2, Eps 6-8
Created by Kurt Sutter
Starring Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Kim Coates, Mark Boone Junior, Maggie Siff and Ron Perlman
Now airing on FX

SPOILERS: This is not to be read until after you’ve seen the 10/28 episode. But if you haven’t watched this show, I have to ask what the hell you’re doing here?

The story so far…

The Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club-Redwood Original (or SAMCRO) rules over the town of Charming, California with a hard but benevolent fist, keeping huge corporate development out of the town, gaining even the respect of the town sheriff. They finance their activities by running guns. Naturally, this runs afoul of the ATF.

The ATF troubles loom behind them (particularly Agent Stahl, played by Ally Walker), but now they’re caught up with the threat that white separatist Ethan Zobelle (Adam Arkin) and his crew pose. They start off the pissing match between them and the Sons by having his XO (Henry Rollins) rape the club matriarch Gemma (Katey Sagal), but Gemma, being made of equal parts piss and ice water, refuses to tell her husband and club president Clay (Ron Perlman), for to do so would destroy the club in a fire of rage.

While on the set of his new movie, Steve Guttenberg spoke to WENN and dropped a mega-bomb on the unsuspecting world: Disney is developing a third movie in their Three Men and a Baby franchise called Three Men and a Bride. Wait, wait — it definitely gets better. Guttenberg also claims that, he Ted Danson, AND Tom Selleck are all set to reprise their roles. Oh, thank you…thank you, God.

The 1987 original movie was a hugely popular hit back in its day. It followed a trio of friends who are living the bachelor life in a sweet bachelor pad before a mysterious baby shows up at their door that supposedly belongs to one of them. Hilarity ensues when these completely unfitting fathers attempt to care for the baby and of its glorious baby habits. The film spawned a sequel entitled Three Men and a Little Lady in which the mother comes back and plans to move the kid to London.

A Wizard Entertainment sales manager managed to royally tee off PvP creator Scott Kurtz just two words into a letter inquiring about the Toronto and Anaheim 2010 Wizard World* Cons.

What exactly were those first two words? “Dear Kurt,” (Mind you, not “Dear Kurtz” or “Dear Scott” but “Kurt”). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that screwing up a person’s name in a formal address to them is liable to not only make you look stupid, but immediately try the patience of whoever you’ve just sent the letter to. It also gives the appearance that you’ve sent the same letter multiple times to multiple people.

Kurtz posted the embarrassing letter from Wizard on the PvPonline Blog along with a colorful response that blasted the organization and its recent scheduling practices…

We at Geeks of Doom are very pleased to share with you this exclusive new clip from AMC’s remake of The Prisoner, the classic 1967 British series of the same name.

This re-interpretation of the original show — which ran 17 episodes from ‘67 to ‘68 — stars Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ, Pay it Forward) in the lead role of Six (first played by Patrick McGoohan) and Sir Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings, The Da Vinci Code) in the role of Two. The miniseries also stars Ruth Wilson (Jane Eyre) as 313, Hayley Atwell (Mansfield Park) as Lucy, Lennie James (Snatch) as 147, and Jamie Campbell-Bower (Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, Twilight: New Moon) as 11-12.

Click on over to the other side to watch this exclusive clip immediately and check out a couple of images as well. You can also head on over to AMC’s official The Prisoner website for a lot more information on the show and its 1967 inspiration!

The Weinstein Company is incredibly giddy that their juggernaut Scream franchise is being revived for a new trilogy. Scream 4 is just gaining some good speed with a script in the works from Kevin Williamson and some of the core cast members locked in to return. This hasn’t stopped the Weinsteins from trying to get all of us giddy-ized (word invented — stamp it!) right along with them, though; the company has created an ultra-basic new teaser poster to check out (Click to go big). All the poster is a our first face-to-face with the infamous Ghostface, and a tiny little promise of some new rules being thrown into the chaos.

As you may or may not know, this is a project that the Weinsteins have been begging Williamson for for a long time now. He finally broke down and got to work developing it as a whole new trilogy. Stars David Arquette and Courteney Cox were pretty much instantly-confirmed for the return, but there was a little drama when it looked like their lead, Neve Campbell, would not be coming back. This, however, did not last long, as it was later confirmed that she too was returning for the ride. The one huge missing link still, is whether Wes Craven will return to direct. An answer to this is expected soon, and all parties seem to think he will, but the script does have to be finished and loved for it to happen. Once again, keep in mind, Scream 3 was made by a totally new writing/directing team, so having Williamson and Craven back would be huge.

Click on over to read a brief description of the movie that TWC attached with the release of their poster:

We’ve certainly seen the story before: high technology machines and robots evolve, rise up, and take over the world of men. Whether it’s Battlestar Galactica, the Terminator franchise, or a movie like I, Robot, people love being scared by the thought of man-made machines turning on us and killing us all. If this trend is kept up, the robot apocalypse could become a genre in itself like zombies, but that isn’t stopping DreamWorks, who are on the verge of acquiring the rights to an unpublished manuscript entitled Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson.

So what makes this project so attractive? What makes Robopocalypse different from the other movies that we’ve seen? Well, it’s realism. Wilson is an actual Ph.D. in robotics, and he has injected a massive level of realism into his tale of man vs. machine, which is what immediately grabbed DreamWorks’ attention. Over the past few years, there have been some terrifying videos of actual man-made robots that are so freaky-realistic, you almost expect them to evolve and slaughter mankind.

Click over to see one video example of how robots are close to taking over the world!

David Tennant, best known to his fans as the Tenth Doctor in the BBC sci-fi television show Doctor Who, has grabbed the lead role in a pilot for NBC called Rex Is Not Your Lawyer – an hour-long legal dramedy about a Chicago lawyer who suffers from panic attacks.

The show was first developed two years ago, but was only greenlit this past August because the studio could not find a suitable actor to play the main role until Tennant came along, according to a report from Reuters. While the report doesn’t mention whether Tennant will be adopting an accent (British or his native Scottish), it’s probably more likely that he’ll be portraying an American.

It’s hard to imagine Tennant in a role that doesn’t in some way touch the sci-fi genre. However, it’s always been clear that his acting abilities stretch far beyond what we’ve seen him do on Doctor Who alone.

Just last week, we learned that last year’s Academy Awards host, Hugh Jackman, would not be returning for the job (Read: Good News Everyone: Hugh Jackman NOT Hosting The Oscars; Who’s Next?), leaving us wondering who would get the gig and if it would be worth caring about in the slightest. The NY Times is now reporting that the annual show’s producers have made not one choice, but two. That’s right, the next Oscars will have two hosts, and they are none other than comic legend Steve Martin and greatest actor ever to live, Alec Baldwin.

The plan this year to to have the wild and wacky antics of Martin contrast Baldwin’s calm, dry delivery. We know that both are very much capable of some great comedy, so it is easy to declare that this could be a phenomenal production. The two actors are also appearing together in master of the romantic comedy Nancy Meyers’ (What Women Want, The Holiday) It’s Complicated, where they will battle each other for the love of Meryl Streep.

A group of trenchcoat-wearing, boombox-lifting Lloyd Dobler look-a-likes took to the streets of New York City today in celebration of the 20th anniversary release of Say Anything on DVD and Blu-ray.

The Doblers, which called themselves “Mobler,” began their adventure at Penn Station and make their way around the city to Washington Square Park and Union Square before ending their journey at Times Square, where the indie band Lloyd Dobler Effect put on an acoustic performance of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”

Check out video from the event here below, and a shot of “Mobler” here at right.