When The Muppets hits theaters the day before Thanksgiving the movie will be missing one of the original “Muppeteers”: Frank Oz.

Before becoming a director with films as diverse as the 1986 musical remake of Little Shop of Horrors and the DeNiro/Brando/Norton crime drama The Score to his credit, Oz provided the voices and movements for several of the most iconic Muppet characters including Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal as well as Grover and Cookie Monster on Sesame Street. He also did the voice and puppeteering for Yoda in the original Star Wars trilogy (for the prequels Oz only did the voice, as Yoda was now a CGI character).

The t-shirt deal of the day over at RIPT Apparel is the movie-themed shirt called “One Nation Under Cinema.”

The tee, by artist Scott Schneider, went on sale at RIPT today, Friday, March 4, 2011, at midnight CST, and will continue for 24 hours from then, and once it’s over, it will not be sold on the site anymore.

The design is of the United States with the titles of popular movies making up each State. Each movie title creates the State where the movie took place. So, for example, in my home state of New York, the actual State is created by the movie title “Ghostbusters.”

A new film based on the comic book super-hero Black Panther is in development by Marvel Studios.

Black Panther is the alter identity of T’Challa, king of the African nation of Wakanda, who made his debut in Fantastic Four #52 and later starred in a solo title that is credited as being the first to feature a black super-hero as the lead.

Marvel has tapped documentary film maker Mark Bailey to pen the new movie, which may give some sort of indication about the overall tone we’re likely to see on the big screen.

One notable element present in Black Panther comics has been the ability for the fictitious African nation to juggle its political relationships with other countries who would like trade deals of Wakanda’s most valuable resource — a nearly indestructible metal called Vibranium. It would be interesting to see a District 9-style telling of Black Panther as opposed to the standard super-hero movie that has become all too common in the last decade.

As you suffer through the post-Christmas hangover and wait for the New Year celebrations to begin, you need something to keep your mind ticking over. Well, you’re in luck!

The Daily Mail has created a giant Blockbuster Quiz picture. Within the picture are clues to the titles of fifty movies. This is very similar to last year’s Cryptic Canvas from Empire magazine, so some of them are very tricky. But us movie geeks love a good challenge, don’t we!

As tempting as it is, I’m not going to look at the answers. I managed to race through the first 30 or so, but since hitting the 40 mark I think my brain is about to explode.

TRON: Legacy
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Starring Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde
Rated PG
Walt Disney Pictures
Release date: December 17, 2010

There are plenty of movies that I can point to as being part of my geek DNA, and the original TRON is one of those movies. I have very strong memories of watching the movie as a kid and it helped to make me the sci-fi fan that I am today. So I have been excited by the prospect of TRON: Legacy since the first announcement was made that it was coming. Now, after almost 30 years since the first film, we have the sequel. Does it live up to the original?

In the original TRON, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) was sent into the world inside the computers, and saved that world from the Master Control Program. TRON: Legacy picks up twenty years later. Kevin Flynn has disappeared, leaving his son Sam (Garret Hedlund), an orphan, desperately holding out hope that his father is still alive. Of course, Sam also gets sent into the computer world, just as his father did before him, and he must track down his father and save the world.