With the end of Summer upon us (or for me, Winter, but whatever), cinemas are seeing less and less profits from their showings. And though Tropic Thunder has once again managed to grab the top spot at the box office, it managed to do so with a measly $11.5 million. The blockbuster summer is definitely over, and who knows how long until we get one like it again.

The highest placed newcomer to this weekend’s box office (I feel like I’m commentating at the Olympics) was Babylon A.D., which itself has been in the news lately due to its directors hatred of the movie. The movie’s director, Mathieu Kassovitz, came out earlier in the week blaming the likely poor performance on Fox, who he blamed for interfering in the process. Nevertheless, it did come in number two, with $9.7 million in takings…

In the late 60′s and early 70′s, anthology horror movies poured from low budget production houses throughout Europe, including the time-honored Black Sabbath from Mario Bava and EC Comics inspired Tales From The Crypt by Freddie Francis. Anthology horror on the big screen took on new life in the US in the 1980s with Creepshow and sputtered out in the early 1990s with Tales From The Darkside: The Movie. Meanwhile in Hong Kong, a ghostly anthology series called Troublesome Night has been going strong since 1997 and most recently the East Asian anthology films Three and Three: Extremes have been chilling audiences around the world.

But is there hope for a revival of this horror niche here in the United States? Writer Dennis Bartok would like to think so. Bartok, who has spent much of his career on the fringes of the film community as the head of programming at American Cinematheque in Los Angeles and as an interviewer for DVD featurettes, makes his screenwriting debut with Trapped Ashes, and with the help of some Japanese financing has brought along some top-name talent to back him up…

Don’t expect to see James Marsters to reprise his role as Detective Grant Mars from the Without a Trace television show. The actor/musician told fans the studio was likely “pissed off” when he declined to resign his contract in favor of other work.

“I thought that they were pretty much done with me,” said Marsters when explaining to fans at Dragon*Con 2008. The studio signed him to a partial contract that meant he wasn’t locked in for the entire season but was also paid less money.

Marsters declined to return after signing on to play Lord Piccolo in the Dragon Ball live-action movie, which is currently in post production and due out in theaters next year…

Latino Review is reporting that Max Makowski has been signed to direct Voltron: Defender of the Universe.

This comes shortly after it was announced that Voltron was indeed still being made (see ‘Voltron’ Movie To Take A Page From ’300′), only cheaper.

Word is that Makowski is a great choice for the job, even though no one knows who he is. Apparently he had a couple movies at Sundance and one go to Cannes and he’s writing the Hawaii Five-O movie and directing a new Kung-Fu movie, but aside from that, most has been TV work (Queer Eye For The Straight Guy).

As you can imagine, Voltron fanboys are writhing with concern…

In this prequel to Disney’s 1989 hit The Little Mermaid, we get to see what life was like under the sea for everyone’s favorite mermaid, Ariel, before she explored the surface. And it wasn’t all fun and games, unfortunately.

The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning opens with the adorable red-headed Ariel as a wee tike, playing happily with her sisters as her deeply in love parents — King Triton and Queen Athena — rule over the merry kingdom of Atlantica. Since Queen Athena doesn’t appear in The Little Mermaid, you immediately know something’s about to go array. That’s when this happy animated feature takes a page from Disney’s Find Nemo by showing what happened to Ariel’s mommy. Since Queen Athena had a beautiful singing voice, the King can’t bear to hear music any longer, so he bans it from his sea kingdom.

Ten years later, we see the now-rebellious princess we know and love. She loves music and can’t understand why her father is so against it, because she’s too young to remember what happened with her mother. Feeling stifled, Ariel breaks away from her father’s protective overbearingness and predictable daily routines and gets into plenty of trouble…

Season 7 of the FX series The Shield premieres this Tuesday, September 2 at 10pm, and in conjunction with this event, Geeks of Doom is giving away one (1) Shield prize pack, that includes a Season 6 DVD and Season 7 poster.

Groundbreaking, critically acclaimed, award winning, consistent, and historic are the most precise words to describe FX’s signature original drama series The Shield.

Since its debut on March 12, 2002, The Shield has set a standard for excellence and redefined basic cable television. Not only did The Shield establish the foundation for what FX has become, but it also paved the way for other ad-supported cable networks to follow its lead to strive for the highest quality scripted drama series. It opened a world of possibility for writers, producers, actors and directors, providing them the new chance to come to basic cable and deliver original scripted series of the highest caliber.

The seventh and final season begins on Tuesday, September 2 at 10 PM ET/PT with new episodes every Tuesday at 10 PM ET/PT though November 25…

The Nathan Fillion/Alan Tudyk Q&A session at Dragon*Con 2008 felt more like well scripted banter. These guys are obviously close friends and it showed. The two gave something away to everyone who asked a questions.

One piece of newsworthy information came during the panel session, concerning a question about a sequel to the much acclaimed Serenity movie. A fan asked if Tudyk if his character would be included and possibly come back as a clone (considering the events at the end of the original movie).

Absolutely, I believe Buffy died twice. I think that would be a great thing to do because I would have to go learn all the things that I knew before…

spent a significant amount of time driving, then waiting on the other members of my party to meet me halfway to Atlanta, GA — the site of Dragon*Con 2008, which I’ve been self-appointed to report on this long labor day weekend. After that, I waited some more while navigating to the hotel, sitting through traffic and then standing in line a really really long ass time to get “badges” for Con entrance.

Productivity was also at a standstill, as the 3G network on my iPhone was nonexistent and using edge to live blog just wasn’t an option I had the luxury of. No, instead I decided to bid my time counting the girls akin to a specific geeky genre, which then led to a complex equation you could reasonably use to determine the total wait time for obtaining your Dragon*Con 2008 badge.

Seriously…

FX Network; Premiere: September 2, 2008, 10PM SPOILER WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE SHIELD: SEASON 6 AND MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST FEW EPISODES OF THE SHIELD: SEASON 7.

It’s been over a year since we’ve seen a new episode of The Shield and, for me, it’s like waiting for an older brother to come home from a brief stint in juvie: Although deep down you know he’s a bad influence and you probably shouldn’t hang out with him, you giddily can’t wait for his return. When we last left Vic Mackey, he had seized Cruz Pezuela’s blackmail box full of material that could compromise every city official in LA. Pezuela was about to use the box as leverage to buy massive portions of Farmington uncontested. Vic was determined to take him down, but with only days left on the job, how would he complete the task?

Unlike 24, where years can transpire between seasons, The Shield has always tried to give us a continuous storyline, regardless of how much time has taken place in real life. Season 7 continues that trend, as the opening scene occurs only hours after last season’s finale. In the season premiere alone, a woman is bound up and gagged as bait for a cop, Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) painfully tortures a criminal for information, and someone is murdered in cold blood. The Shield is back, baby…

During the middle of the Transformers, a fat kid with a digital camera comes running out of his house to take pictures of craters that fell from the night sky. He screams “this is 100 percent better than Armageddon!” Director Michael Bay makes it clear to us that he’s having a blast making this movie. The kid wasn’t lying. It is more fun than Bay’s Armageddon, and his Pearl Harbor. He found the right place to work his magic and we don’t feel overwhelmed by the special effects. This movie needs them unlike his previous films did. Having Steven Spielberg as executive producer could have only helped Bay.

I was never into the whole Transformers craze that was full throttle through the ’80s and ’90s. Morphing cars, airplanes, anything, it never struck interest in me. Never watching it could be a good thing because I didn’t expect it to be much (unlike TMNT). Watching it could have been a good thing as well because I could have a better idea of what was going on with the meaning and importance of the cube. Transformers proves to be a great action film and a great teenage love story at the same time. Fan of the franchise or not, the movie does it good justice.

The arena for this epic but still simple battle between good and evil, is our planet Earth. It’s between the Autobots (good guys) led by Optimus Prime and the Decepticons (bad guys) led by Megatron. They came to Earth from their planet Cybertron because the Allspark can make everything good again. The Allspark is hidden somewhere on our planet. If the Decepticons retrieve it, they will have complete power over the entire human race…

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is Michael Cera‘s follow-up to last year’s indie darling Juno. Cera plays Nick, an indie rock-loving bass player just coming off a bad breakup with he meets Norah (40-Year-Old Virgin‘s Kat Dennings). The duo embark on a journey through the night-time streets of New York City in search of a secret concert, which turns into their unlikely first date.

Not much else is known as the movie at this point — you can read the official brief synopsis here below — but the title would suggest it revolves around the music that Nick and Norah share in common.

To help promote the film, Sony’s official site for the film has a Widget Builder which allows you to not only create your own playlist, but actually PLAY the songs! Here below, you can check out the playlist I created, which is an example of what you’ll be listening to if you hang out with me. I warn you, it’s every f’n metal! \m/\m/

A few things about creating the “My Infinite Playlist”: 1) you have to sign up at imeem.com to publish your Playlist; 2) I didn’t see a way to check which version of a song was available (so, the first time I picked “The Trooper” by Iron Maiden, it actually was NOT by Iron Maiden, to my horror, so I redid my Widget so we’ll see what happens this time; and 3) you can customize your widget with shapes, highlighting, text, video, and photos, which is a nice touch.

The site has some other cool stuff you can build as well like “My Night Out With Nick & Norah” and “My Movie Widget.” Here’s a round-up of features …

Last May, it was announced that Steven Spielbergand Peter Jackson were to direct and produce three performance-capture films based on Georges Remi’s 1929 comic strip, Tintin.

Since then, rumors surfaced that Spielberg would no longer be directing the first movie in the planned film trilogy and that Jackson would be moving up from directing the second film to the first.

Now, there’s news that both Jackson’s and Spielberg’s people have confirmed that nothing has changed and that Spielberg would still do the first and Jackson would do the second. No word yet on who will direct the third film…

Back in November 2006, it was announced that the super-violent comic called Preacher would be turned into a one-hours series on HBO. This was exciting to fans of the Garth Ennis comic book series as it promised all the necessary violence and a whole lot more than two hours of content a movie adaptation would have provided.

Now, those dreams have been slaughtered as Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil, Ghost Rider), who was trying to get the project going, has told Comics Continuum that the new head of HBO decided he didn’t like it.

We were budgeting and everything and it was getting really close to going, but the new head of HBO felt it was just too dark and too violent and too controversial. Which, of course, is kind of the point!

HBO also offered Johnson the chance to re-do everything and try and tone it down, but he decided to just pass on it all together…

Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Heroes) has been cast in Warner Bros. upcoming CG-animated movie adaptation, Astro Boy.

The storyline runs along the same vein as Pinocchio and Edward Scissorhands where a boy is created; in this case the boy is created by a scientist to replace a son that he lost. This doesn’t work out so well and Astroboy goes off on an adventure looking for people to like him. On his journey, he discovers his great powers and becomes a hero that has to return home to save Metro City and re-unite with the scientist that created and rejected him.

Nicolas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Bill Nighy, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy, and Freddie Highmore are all set to lend their voices to the movie as well.

Filmed almost immediately following Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger is the second of two Jack Ryan films starring Harrison Ford, but third overall and fourth in the series continuity. Confused yet? Don’t worry, it doesn’t really matter, aside from the fact that Ryan’s wife is pregnant in Patriot Games and their son is already a few years old in Clear and Present Danger.

The primary plot of the film revolves around a Mexican drug cartel, but given today’s political climate, the story can strike a deep chord with many people without looking for a literal representation. No, instead there are the ever-present themes of political corruption, double-dealing, secret government operations and abuse of power. In this particular case, we see a sitting President use the power of his office to settle a personal vendetta, paid for with the lives of American soldiers and promptly swept under the rug when things don’t go so well. Oh the irony. ..