my.bicycle

Labels: movie, sf, total and complete failure, video

June 8, 1959: They'll Never Complain About Slow Postal Service Again

The missile was fired shortly before noon from a launcher aboard the submarine USS Barbero, cruising off the coast of Virginia. Twenty-two minutes after launch, the missile struck its target at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida.

The mail was retrieved, sorted and routed in the usual way from a post office in nearby Jacksonville.

Rocket mail, which has a whiff of theatrics to it, still exists and still has advocates around the world. Since the end of the cold war, a number of surplus missiles culled from the Soviet nuclear arsenal have been used to fire mail around Russia, including a few experimental launches from nuclear subs.

Labels: sf, total and complete failure

Gods of future fashion on display at jwz’s livejournal.

Labels: sf

The Lost Room (Wikipedia) - Did anyone see this show? It sounds pretty interesting, but I've not yet found it through iTMS. Oddly enough The Dresden Files first episode was offered as a free download through iTMS, but I've been watching too much Carnivale to get to it yet.

Note: Testing out-of-Beta Blogger's new features with this post.

Labels: sf, TV

Battlestar Galactica Season 3 will be preceded by a series of 10 webisodes called The Resistance, starting Sept. 5 and broadcast every few days until the (presumably) standard broadcast season premiere.

Labels: sf

Star Trek inspirational posters. I encourage you to make your own...

Labels: sf

If you haven’t already checked out Mike Mignola’s The Amazing Screw-On Head, you are doing yourself a disservice. SciFi Channel may pick up the series, or not, based on viewer response. It would be great if SciFi got back to SF, like if MTV rediscovered music videos, so check it out and leave feedback!

Labels: sf

Directing the new Star Trek movie? Young Kirk? Young Spock? JJ Abrams says it ain’t so.

Labels: sf

Not surprisingly, soon after ABC announced it’s limited offering of shows on iTunes Music Store to play on iPods, NBC has also quickly stepped up to do the same (iTMS link). Maybe I can watch The Office at last. But I have to admit to being a lot more excited about finally being able to watch the SciFi Channel revamp of Battlestar Galactica (iTMS)!

Labels: sf

Apparently I get a cameo in Cory Doctorow’s latest work, a serialized novel at Salon called Themepunks:

He hopped to, quickly moving to an older man, tapping him on the shoulder, whispering in his ear. Andrea squeezed Francis's hand as the fire chief approached them. She extended her hand and talked fast. "Andrea Fleeks," she said, and took out her notebook, the key prop in any set piece involving a reporter. "I'm told that you are going to let those homes burn because someone representing himself as the title-holder to that property has denied you entry. However, I'm also told that the title to that land is in dispute and has been in the courts for decades. Can you resolve this for me, Chief ...?"

"Chief Brian Wannamaker," he said. He was her age, with the leathery skin of a Florida native who spent a lot of time out of doors. "I'm afraid I have no comment for you at this time."

Andrea kept her face deadpan, and gave Francis's hand a warning squeeze to keep him quiet. He was trembling now. "I see. You can't comment, you can't fight the fire. Is that what you'd like me to write in tomorrow's paper?"

Despite a reversion to an older spelling of my last name and my complete lack of a tan or leathery skin (and the possiblity that this is entirely unrelated...) I am completely stoked. (timmeh)

Labels: sf

There appears to be some clever viral advertising for the upcoming Firefly movie, Serenity. (thanks, jjgalahad)

Update—Once more, in order, one new bit:

• Session 1 (.mov)
• Session 22 (.mov)
• Session 416 (.mov)

Labels: sf

11th Hour Art for Firefly: fan-based guerilla marketing for the SciFi re-airing of Firefly, and its upcoming Serenity movie. I had to bookmark these during a "bad wifi day" and can't remember where I first saw them. Only recently did I manage to see the first episode of Firefly, and it knocked my socks off. You know how the first episode of any Star Trek series sucks rocks because the characters aren't yet really defined? Didn't happen a lick. Very, very cool; let's give a communal raspberry to whatever forces kept this series from making it.

Common Tunes: community directory of free and legal music and video. Many of these are BitTorrent links, so "yay!" and some are .asx streams, which is kinda sucky, but hey. (I think this through Waxy)

Failmath offers a quiz challenging takers to recognize which gritty, realistic, urban brawler is which? I painstakingly filled in all the answers, and was dismayed at how hard it is to tell them apart. Which is right about when my net connection went down, and I can't be bothered to re-take the test now.

Labels: sf

Good news: Classic TV series Land of the Lost will be out on DVD shortly.
Bad news: Will Ferrell will be starring in a movie remake of it. (jwz)

Labels: sf

SciFi channel hosts a blog for Battlestar Galactica. This is where you can get the podcasts for the show, letting you hear creators’ commentary during the show’s initial broadcast.

Labels: sf

SciFi.com is offering Chi-Chian, an episodic Flash webtoon. Its style is undeniably cool; check the trailer at least.

Labels: sf

James Tiberius Kirk. In one word: Khan.

Labels: sf, video

The movie adaptation of Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder has trailers out now. It looks like they've extended it to include a "going-back-and-fixing-it" portion that I don't recall from the original story. Yay, Hollywood!

Labels: sf

Rick Berman, who has been shepherding the Star Trek film series, told SCI FI Wire that he has had "very, very early" talks with Star Trek: The Next Generation star and director Jonathan Frakes about a new Trek movie, but one that takes the franchise in an entirely new direction. "I spoke to Jonathan about a half an hour ago," Berman said in an interview July 20 at UPN's fall press preview in Los Angeles. "He's in Japan, and he's coming here [because] his film [Thunderbirds] is premiering Saturday here in Los Angeles. There are very, very early conversations going on about a film project. But they're so early that it's really kind of silly to talk about it now."

Berman added that the movie would not center on the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew, as have the last several movies. "The movie that we're having very early discussions about would have nothing to do with any of the characters that have ever existed on any of the Star Trek series," Berman said. "It would be an entirely new setting and an entirely new set of characters, and it would take place prior to any of the series, including [UPN's Star Trek:] Enterprise."

In the wake of the disappointing box-office performance of the last Star Trek movie, 2002's Nemesis, there has been little movement on a new Trek movie, and Next Generation cast members have said they are ready to hang it up.

If Berman's idea comes to fruition, it would mark the first Trek movie not based on a television series. (via comingsoon)

Labels: sf

Boob beams. If this is what F.A.K.K. 2/Heavy Metal had been, the game and movie would have been.. um. Less of a bust? Just check the preview trailer. (via KINKY SciFi Tribe)

Labels: sf

NBC has commissioned a script for revisiting the world of "V". 20 years ago, this show rocked my sophomore-in-high-school mind. It was charming and groundbreaking at the time. But honestly, with Battlestar Galactica coming back as well, you'd think there was no idea under the sun that doesn't involve dragging the Trousers of My Childhood out, inverting them, and seeing if any loose change can be shaken from them.

Labels: sf