Well-known actor of stage and screens both big and small — Ron Silver has passed away at the age of 62. He had been battling esophageal cancer for two years when he passed away this morning quietly in his sleep.

Along with his work on the stage, Silver appeared in many movies, including Silkwood, Romancing the Stone, Blue Steel, and Reversal of Fortune, as well as more recent movies like Ali, Find Me Guilty, and The Ten. He appeared on multiple big-time TV shows, with long stints on Chicago Hope and perhaps his best work on The West Wing. He was nominated for two Emmys, one for The West Wing.

Not only did Ron Silver leave us with a lot of great entertainment on many different platforms, he was also a longtime political activist. Most recently he even had his own public affairs show on Sirius satellite radio. Because of his passion for politics, it is likely that his work on The West Wing was his most passionate work, and the work that will leave his greatest mark on our world. [...]

It’s being reported that the United Nations is going to hold a type of panel specifically for the TV show Battlestar Galactica. The plan being, to look at the way the show has focused on real issues our world faces, and how they were dealt with on the show. For those of you who are fans of the old Battlestar Galactica or just don’t like the current show, which is set to air its series finale in a depressing weeks time — you need only read this story to see just how brilliant, important, and just plain damn good it really is.

Battlestar Galactica is known as a massively entertaining science fiction show about the final thousands of human beings left in the universe struggling to find a new home where they can rebuild humanity, all while fighting the highly-evolved Cylon race, who are attempting to wipe out the “weak” human species. But on top of this solid foundation, Galactica infuses a vast array of human tendencies, political strategies and downfalls, religions, and all-around real world issues that we see every single day in our own lives. [...]

Once upon a time, we heard the wonderful news that we would be eventually seeing both animated and live-action TV shows based in the world of Star Wars. The Clone Wars animated series has come along, but we hadn’t heard any news on the live-action show — a show which had most people already hooked with promises of being “Deadwood meets The Sopranos in space” and rumors of it airing on HBO. Though the HBO thing is probably too good to be true, now comes some surprising news that the show may be casting already.

While speaking at a panel for her new movie — Knowing, with Nicolas Cage — Rose Byrne (28 Weeks Later, Sunshine) let it slip that a lot of her buddies have auditioned for roles on the show. Byrne had a small and not very visual role in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, but says she won’t be auditioning for the show as she currently stars on Damages. [...]

Morena Baccarin, known best as the sexy and well-respected escort from Joss Whedon’s Firefly has been cast as one of the leads in the pilot for ABC’s V. (Read: Science Fiction Series ‘V’ To Attempt Return To TV)

V is a remake of an ’80s show which told the tale of a race of aliens known as Visitors who come to earth in an effort to take it over. Baccarin would play Anna, the leader of the Visitors, who is smart and very knowledgeable in human culture.

The show isn’t a guarantee yet, as ABC has only ordered the pilot to see how it fares. The pilot is based on a spec script by Scott Peters.

The original show aired 19 episodes in 1984 and 1985, and it starred Beastmaster Marc Singer in the lead. His character captures one of the Visitors named Diana, who is put on trial for her actions.

The new show was supposedly going to follow a female Homeland Security agent, so I assumed because of this female replacement of Singer’s agent character, the leader of the aliens would be male. [...]

Seinfeld fans have longed for it since the moment the show aired its final episode eleven painful years ago. The cast of the brilliant and quite possible funniest show ever made, Seinfeld, will make their first on-screen, scripted appearance together since the shows end. The whole gang — Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards will get together for a new story arc that will span multiple episodes on the ultra-sarcastic and hilarious HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm. The show, as most know, stars Larry David, who created Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld.

Don’t get your hopes up too, too high; the appearances will be as themselves and not as their characters on Seinfeld. Even so, I’d be shocked if you didn’t see the actors offering up some very distinctive dialogue or reactions to give fans that warm and fuzzy feeling of pure unfiltered nostalgia.

The appearances will take place sometime during the show’s seventh season. The season isn’t set to start and we don’t know exactly when the group’s involvement will begin, but it has been announced and that’s pretty exciting. [...]

Widely considered to be a groundbreaking series that changed the way the world viewed comic books, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen showed us that comics could be more than just funny books, but a place for challenging, thought-provoking literature that extends beyond the mere cape and cowl of typical innocuous superhero tales.

Some of us geeks just found out about Watchmen when director Zack Snyder announced that he was be making the film adaptation for Warner Bros.; the rest of us have been waiting for over 20 years to see a Watchmen movie done right on the big screen. After years in development hell, a potentially damaging lawsuit, and the stigma of being called the “unfilmable” story, the theatrical opening of Watchmen is finally upon us! Whether you highly anticipate the movie or are as skeptical as can be about it, there’s no doubt it’s at the forefront of all of our minds: will Zack Snyder and his propensity for slo-mo be a distraction or will he bring the printed page faithfully to life the way we all hope?

Here’s some anticipatory thoughts from those of us on the Doom Crew — who happened to be huge lovers of both movies and comic books — on this most auspicious occasion [...]

Today’s Goldbox spotlight item of the day over at Amazon is Seinfeld - The Complete Series on DVD for only $99.99 (that’s 60% off the list price of $250.95).

The long-running show infamously known to be about “nothing” starred comedian Jerry Seinfeld as himself, along with Jason Alexander as his conniving best friend George, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as his ex-girlfriend turned gal pal Elaine, Michael Richards as his eccentric next door neighbor Kramer, and Wayne Knight as his neighbor/nemesis Newman. Jerry and his pals live in New York City and somehow manage to turn the mundane into a laugh riot, making the show — created by Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David one of the funniest in sitcom history.

This 32-disc two-volume DVD set contains all 180 episodes of the nine-season series along with The Official Coffee Table Book, a 226-page, bound anthology filled with photos, quotes, trivia from every episode, and personal reflections from Jerry Seinfeld. The collectible book comes with a bonus disc featuring “The Roundtable,” an hour-long feature that’s a reunion of the entire cast along with Larry David on the ninth anniversary of the series finale.

Note, this deal is only good for today until midnight PST or until supplies last before then, so grab this well you can. It’s absolutely a worthy investment. Check out the DVD bonus features [...]

Good news, everyone!

Recently we shared a great little video which combined clips from Futurama and the Watchmen movie trailer. In this little gem, I made mention of someone, like maybe Comedy Central, being the ones who are smart enough to bring Futurama back to TV.

After posting this story, I checked out HippoJuice, the fine folks who lead us to the Watchmen video. On their site, they had just hit Supercon in Florida, where they had the opportunity to interview voice master Billy West of Futurama fame. Before the interview, Mr. West sat in front of a small crowd a shared a little golden nugget, explaining that because of the success of the four straight-to-DVD Futurama movies that have been made, Fox was now pondering a possible 6th season of the show!

Click over for the video of this announcement and the Billy West interview.

As we all are well-aware, Fox has a nice streak of canceling shows before anyone even sees them: Family Guy and Firefly being the main examples of this. [...]

On YouTube, the possibilities are endless. Any one day, you can go off on a quest and find some fantastic videos. Sometimes it’s just people being retarded, other times it’s people showing their true genius.

A Huge thank you to HippoJuice, who pointed us in the direction of this incredibly amusing bit of solid human genius. It’s the Watchmen trailer we’ve all seen a thousand times (hell, we’ve probably even seen a thousand mash-ups of it as well!), but this time, it’s coated over with clips from the late, great, and hopefully soon-to-be re-great (that was a hint, Comedy Central) show, Futurama.

The priceless part of it all, is how it’s not just giggle-worthy Futurama clips, but most of the clips they used actually match up with hilarious accuracy to the Watchmen trailer.

That is about as best I can describe it. You just have to go forth and watch it yourself. You will not regret it.

Click over for the video! [...]

We’ve tried to cover as much of The Boondock Saints and its sequel Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day as humanly possible. While director Troy Duffy and his team are busy in post production and we haven’t heard anything in a while, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little news for you.

For you mega fans with a Blu-ray player, we wanted to remind you that there is now a sweet copy of The Boondock Saints available. You can head over to Amazon and check it out here: The Boondock Saints on Blu-ray.

Some of the bonus features included on the disk are: Commentary by Troy Duffy, commentary with Billy Connolly (which may be worth the price alone!), deleted scenes, outtakes, a look at the script, and the theatrical trailer.

The release comes at the decade mark of the original film’s release. It’s pretty mind-blowing to think it came out that long ago, as it is still gaining a fan base as the sequel moves closer and closer. [...]

Family Guy has always been very much fanboy-driven, which reached new heights when the show was giving the blessing of George Lucas himself to spoof Star Wars. Following the very funny spoof, called Blue Harvest, it is expected that both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi will also be coming, starting next season with the Empire parody.

Now comes word that their fanboy love affair won’t be stopping there. The popular animated Fox series will also be branching out into the world of Star Trek with an episode called “Not All Dogs Go To Heaven,” set to air on March 29.

The difference here is that the episode will be a Family Guy episode with the integration of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation into that particular episodes storyline, which follows the Griffin family to Quahog’s annual Star Trek convention.

It also helps that Patrick Stewart has voiced the show before and he’s an actual cast member of show creator Seth MacFarlane’s other show, American Dad.

Click over for a full episode description, expected names involved, and even a little taste of what this might be like via video clip of a previous Family Guy episode. [...]

As we are all aware, there’s been some drama in regards to Seth Rogen’s attempt at bringing The Green Hornet to the big screen. Stephen Chow was tapped to direct the movie and star as Kato, but things didn’t go so smoothly and he stepped down from the chair.

Now it’s being reported that a new director is in negotiations: Michel Gondry.

Gondry is best known for his brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as well as The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind. A superhero movie seems a little odd for Gondry’s style, but hell, Tsotsi director Gavin Hood is doing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so have at it, sir.

Stephen Chow is still expected to star as Kato alongside Seth Rogen’s Hornet. Rogen is also writing the script with pal Evan Goldberg.

Hopefully this follows through so this movie can escape the evil clutches of development hell for once and for all and get itself rolling with pre-production [...]

Well, ladies and gentlemen, tonight was the big night — the 81st Academy Awards ceremony and below we have the full list of winners for you.

This was notable because it seemed a large effort was being put forward to change things up a bit and make the show a lot more entertaining in an attempt to bring in more viewers. They went off the track and hired Hugh Jackman to host the show instead of the normal comedian, they shook things up by using different methods of presenters, such as five previous winners instead of just last year’s winner. They tried a new thing called the “yearbook” where various clips from various genres from the year were shown; this was a chance to show movies like Hancock, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Death Race to try and appeal to younger crowds. They even changed up the In Memoriam section, having Queen Latifah sing live while our dearly departed were shown one last time on screens in the background.

Now I’m not sure if it’s just me, or what the overall consensus will be, but personally, I thought it was a massive failure. The show was severely boring and hard to watch at times. After promises of Hugh Jackman not doing “Hugh Jackman” things like singing and dancing, he surely did plenty of singing and dancing [...]

IGN has gotten word that Universal is working on possibly turning the TV show Battlestar Galactica into a major motion picture. The interesting twist here, is that they want to make a movie based on the 1978 TV series for which the current show on SCI FI is based. Universal’s plan is for Glen A. Larson, who created the original show, to write and produce the new movie version.

The foundation of both shows is that civilization was decimated by the machine race known as the Cylons and the survivor’s fight to find a new home called Earth while led by Commander Adama. The big difference is the high amounts of sex, politics, and pure human emotion that the current show delivers, which bring a certain realism to this fictional future; while the 1978 show has that hardcore 70s cheese factor we’ve seen many times before.

Naturally, there are many fans of the old show who hate all the thinking that goes into the Ronald D. Moore version, so they’re all about this announcement. Personally, I think it’s the worst idea ever picked out of a hat on “Brainstorm Tuesdays” [...]

Secret Diary of a Call Girl Season 1
Starring Billie Piper, Iddo Goldberg
Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Release Date: January 6, 2009

If you’re a dedicated geek with a penchant for overseas sci-fi, then you’re more than familiar with Billie Piper, the one-time U.K. pop singer who co-starred in the BBC’s relaunching of Doctor Who. If that’s the case, do away with your image of Piper as a flirty, adventurous companion to the Doctor and get ready for Piper as a flirty, adventurous, companion to anyone who can afford her.

As the lead in Showtime’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Piper plays Hannah, your average well-to-do London girl whose nights working as a “legal secretary” conceal a seedier truth: she’s a high-class, high-priced hooker named Belle. But that’s not much of a secret considering the title. In fact, the eight short episodes (about 23 minutes each) that comprise this first season collection are less about secrets than they are stand-alone sex stories centered around Hannah’s less-than-shocking confessions. Each of the episodes is fairly formulaic: Hannah talks to friend Ben on the phone, Hannah has a client situation that’s outside the norm, Hannah realizes why things are hard for her, Hannah has sex, Ben and Hannah argue and/or make-up, and Hannah puts something in her mouth (at some point).

So if you’re looking forward to a tawdry, documentary-style look at the life of a London sex worker, this is not it (unless you think that Hannah’s confession that she uses lubricant and male prostitutes use Viagra is ground-breaking) [...]

Frisky Dingo Season 2
Created by Adam Reed, Matt Thompson
Starring Marsha Crenshaw, Stuart Culpepper, Mr. Ford, Killer Mike, Kate Miller
Warner Home Video
Release Date: January 6, 2009

Fans of Adult Swim’s Frisky Dingo should be happy to know that the second season of the series is now out on DVD. Created by Adam Reed and Matt Thompson, who also created Adult Swim hit SeaLab 2021,the series focuses on supervillain Killface and his encounters with his arch enemy Xander Crews aka Awesome X.

When we last left Killface in Season One, his death ray, the Annihilatrix, was activated and Earth looked like it was doomed. Lucky for us, the Annihilatrix was a dud. It stopped working 5 minutes into its launch sequence but not before it pushes the Earth inches away from the Sun, effectively saving us from global warming. Killface is unexpectedly viewed as a hero, so what does one do when they have so much of the public in their favor? Why, you run for President of course.

A cross between Arrested Development and The Office, this totally irrelevant, and at times in poor taste, adult-oriented cartoon is pretty funny and I really enjoyed it. If you are a fan of Sealab 2021 like I am, you will definitely like this cartoon [...]

Joss Whedon previewed his new television show Dollhouse to a crowd of enthusiastic fans at New York Comic Con’s first big Sunday panel.

Dollhouse peers into the life of Echo (played by Eliza Dushku), a human “doll” who takes on a new personality to perform missions for an underground criminal organization and is then mind-wiped after completion. When Echo starts to put together bits and pieces from past missions, she begins a search for her own self identity.

Tahmoh Penikett (Battlestar Galactica) co-stars as Paul, an FBI special agent who discovers the underground “dollhouse” facility when Echo begins to regain memories from her previous identities.

The clip shown at the panel of the upcoming show, which began with Echo is a counseling session. Next, Echo is on a motorcycle racing down a busy city street against who she believed to be her boyfriend. They end the race at a club where they celebrate the boyfriend’s birthday [...]

The Robot Chicken panel at this year’s New York Comic Con was every bit like the show it was there to honor and discuss — that is to say, chock full of rapid-fire jokes, non sequiturs, cursing, and plenty of raunchiness.

While the panel stayed mum on many of next season’s secrets, they did say a large order for M.A.S.K. toys had been placed, and they were more than ready with sometimes candid, but always funny, responses to audience questions. When asked about the possibility of an Austin Powers 4, Robot Chicken creator Seth Green excitedly answered, to paraphrase, “Yeah, guys, I’ve been waiting to tell you — no.”

He then aimed a small jab at the actor behind the shagadelic spy, saying, “I think Mike Myers is still smarting from The Love Guru.

As talk turned to the creative process behind Robot Chicken, Breckin Meyer, writer and castmember, revealed that Green’s habit of laughing at an idea before flat-out rejecting it made him want to lunge over the table at him. The panelists also acted out some of their favorite rejected and cut sequences [...]

Ben 10 Alien Force Season One, Vol. 2
Created by Man of Action
Featuring the voices of Yuri Lowenthal, Ashley Johnson, Greg Cipes
Rated Y7
Warner Home Video
Release Date: January 13, 2009

Ben 10 Alien Force Vol. 2 continues the journey of teenage hero Ben Tennyson. Alongside his cousin Gwen, his former nemesis Kevin Levin, and with the help of his DNA changer the Omintrix , Ben is on a mission to find his Grandpa Max and kick some alien butt along the way. Created by Man of Action (aka comic writers and artists Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau, Joe Casey, and Steven T. Seagle), Vol. 2 contains four episodes from the first season of the popular cartoon.

There is really nothing new to say about this series that hasn’t already been said. Ben 10 is a by the books cartoon and that is not necessarily a bad thing. It actually reminds me a lot of the old cartoons of yesteryear. It is short and concise and overall, a satisfying experience. Most of the cartoon is hand drawn, a practice that seems to be becoming a lost art. It is also easy to follow for viewers who are just getting into Ben 10 but still able to touch upon pre-existing storylines from previous episodes to give a sense of continuity for long-time viewers [...]

It’s usually the biggest TV day of the year: Super Bowl Sunday. If you’re a sports fan, you’re excited about the game, and if you hate sports, you still watch to see the legendary commercial lineup in hopes of seeing some marketing brilliance.

Among all of these commercials each year, we also get some peeks at the year’s biggest upcoming movies and this year is no slouch. In fact, this may just be the BIGGEST Super Bowl for movie previews that we’ve ever seen.

Personally, I’m a huge sports fan, so I’m usually watching the big game… but this year is a pretty boring match-up, so it’s fitting that the telecast will be riddled with huge movie peeks.

We’ve already posted the one for the new Star Trek preview, but here you can see the Super Bowl spots for massive summer fare such as: Up!, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, The Year One, Race to Witch Mountain, Land of the Lost, and yes, oh yes… Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Venture to the other side for all of the TV spot video goodness! [...]