The Great Geek Manual

Film

• Big Stupid Idiot tries to impress with a list of 20 Things You Didn’t Know About The New Star Trek, but of course, the only things in the list I didn’t know would have been readily apparent once I actually saw the film.
• Director Joseph McGinty tells the LA Times that “We’re bringing credibility back’ to ‘Terminator’ franchise.”
• Director Robert Rodriguez confirms that there is going to be a Sin City 2, just as soon as he completes a few other commitments.
• The Editing Room takes pot-shots at X-Men Origins: Wolverine with a parody of a script for the film.
• io9 discusses The Sexualization of Spock, but the spoilers in the article enrage the blog’s readers and the comments end up being better reading than the article itself.
• Leonard Nimoy shares his personal feelings about the “gigantic, cinematic, big story” of the Star Trek reboot at FX International Con in Orlando, Florida. “I Cried A Lot!” he admits.
• Movie Retriever Looks Back at the Star Trek Films in the franchise with clips.
• Premiere’s list of The 20 Worst Movie Moms has me scratching my head. They name Sarah Connor as one of their worst, but omits both Corinne Dollanganger from Flowers in the Attic and “Momma” from Throw Momma from the Train who would have been my top two choices. It also leaves me wondering whether or not Rosemary from Rosemary’s Baby belong on the list.
• Reviewers with the Vatican’s newspaper have declared “Angels & Demons,” to be commercial and inaccurate but harmless entertainment that isn’t a danger to the church.
• Roger Ebert gives the new Star Trek film 2½ stars after raving about Nicolas Cage’s Knowing. The Boston Globe, however, tells a different story. They give Star Trek four stars and call its “a genius move.”
• Terminator Salvation director Joseph McGinty discusses ratings and deleted scenes.

Internet

• DVice takes a stab at listing Star Trek technologies that are almost here, but they omit plasma shields from the list.
• College Humor’s FONT FIGHT! the long-awaited sequel to its Font Conference.
• Staggered film releases no longer work in a global economy and are to blame for the rise of pirate websites, says Guardian writer Naomi Alderman, because if you can’t buy it legally, of course you’ll download it. I thought it was refreshing to read this sort of common sense from a big-label media outlet.
• You Can’t Please Everyone is a collection of one-star Amazon.com reviews of classic movies, music, and literature. My personal favorite: “I dont care if Homer was blind or not this book is like 900 pages too long. I could tell this story in about 10 pages.”

Literature

• Free Fiction: Listen to “Get Me to the Job on Time” by Ian Randal Strock at Escape Pod.
• Free Fiction: Listen to “The Virginal Seas of the Moon” by Melinda Selmys at SteamPod.
• Interview: Charlie Rose interviews J.J. Abrams on the making of Star Trek.
• Interview: David Crumm interviews Gabriel McKee, author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction, about the Spirituality of Star Trek.
• Interview: USA Today features an interview with Charlaine Harris, who just released Dead and Gone.
• The Art of Penguin Science Fiction is a gallery of book jackets in the Penguin Science Fiction line. Browse alphabetically by author.
• io9 asks What’s The Difference Between Space Opera and Military SF?
• io9 spells out The Top Ten Rules Of Space Opera beginning with “Have a giant object in space.”

Television

• Getting into the spirit this week, NPR’s All Things Considered featured a story about a Klingon Opera Company called the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble. KTRE is currently trying to “learn the ways of Klingon music through theory and practical application.”

Television

• Cinema Blend explains Five Reasons Women Should Like Star Trek, but I don’t see Star Trek increasing its female demographic dramatically anytime soon.
• Cracked reels off Star Trek’s 6 Most Ridiculous Alien Races.
• Mark Holcomb of the Las Vegas Weekly is seeking out a new sci-fi fix since the finale of BattleStar Galactica. He’s turned to the BBC Quatermass series, which he compares favorably to Galactica.

Writing

• Author Jeremiah Tolbert debunks 5 Lies Writers Believe About Editors.