With two novels under her belt, writer Rebecca Donner recently wrote a graphic novel under the female driven comic imprint Minx. Geeks of Doom’s own JackBauerstein took some time out of her busy schedule to talk about her graphic novel, Burnout and her future novels.

Geeks of Doom: How did you first come up with the idea for Burnout?

Rebecca Donner: I had been hiking, and afterwards I couldn’t shake this image in my head of a mountain burning – these terrible yet beautiful saffron flames leaping against the backdrop of a midnight sky. The book basically works toward that image from the very first page, and it becomes a pivotal, culminating scene. Coupled with that was an idea I’d been kicking around for a while about…er,…a quasi-incest situation. Ah, I’ll stop right there — I’ve given away too much already!…

The Hunt for Red October is hands-down the best film in the Jack Ryan series for a number of reasons, but first and foremost is the lack of a major villain. Instead the conflict is provided by the cryptic world of international politics and tense foreign relations that are all too real. Obviously there are villainous characters, but their roles are minor and are often interjected to give the plot a single push when needed.
A young Alec Baldwin plays a Jack Ryan who believes in others more than he believes in himself, but whose dedication to doing the right thing is unwavering.

Sean Connery play the mysterious submarine Captain Marko Ramius, whose internal conflict creates an international crisis. Ramius is perhaps the most interesting character in any of the Ryan films. His own dreams surpass any nationalism that may be ingrained into him through years of military service. Despite the fact that we see him commit treason, desertion, murder and conspiracy, viewers will find it near impossible not to sympathize with Ramius’ cause.

But if you own this film on DVD already, is it worth buying again [...]

After going back to re-watch Season 1, and finding myself pleasantly surprised at how well it held up, I also went back and watched the second season of Heroes. You may call me an apologist, but I enjoyed season 2 almost as much as the first one. Did the season have its problems? Sure. A lot of the new characters were dumb and annoying, and their introduction caused characters the audience had grown attached to in the first season to be cast aside. It also didn’t help the show that the writer’s strike occurred just as the story was gaining some speed and becoming more interesting. Having seen some of what the creators had planned for the second half of the season, I’m sad that we didn’t get the story as planned. Still, we get 11 solid episodes on this set, and while they may not be quite as good as the first season, they still have their moments, and are more enjoyable than a lot of other crap on TV.

The episodes on this set cover the entire second season, which saw Hiro (Masi Oka) sent to the past to inspire his childhood hero. We also got Peter’s (Milo Ventimiglia) trip to Ireland, then his trip to the future, followed by his journey to Texas. We got Claire (Hayden Panettiere) and her annoying new boyfriend, the “death” of HRG (Jack Coleman), and then we got to meet Claire’s birth mother [...]

A funny thing happened about halfway through this movie, the Minotaur showed up, and suddenly I realized that I was watching an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journey. This is not to say I was ever a fan of Hercules, but I was just very much reminded of that series. The dimly lit sets, the goofy comic relief, the bad CG monsters, yes it had it all. And like Hercules, Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior had a simple charm to it, and I found myself starting to appreciate it.

Now let’s get this out of the way. This is NOT a good movie. It looks about as good as you would expect a direct-to-DVD movie to look. The dialogue is pretty wooden, as are a lot of the actors. I mean, you don’t even get to make fun of The Rock, or ogle Kelly Hu’s magnificent figure, which is pretty much the only reason to watch the first Scorpion King film.

My biggest problem with Scorpion King 2 is that it contains none of the fun, dumb action movie sensibilities of the Mummy movies that it is a spin-off of. This movie takes itself way too seriously, and if it had even a little of the Mummy’s tongue-in-cheek humor, I could handle it, but it’s just not there [...]

Nothing is 100% official here yet, but DreamWorks has Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum) at the top of their short list of directors to take on their version of Blackbeard, about Edward Teach, who went on to become Blackbeard the pirate.

One thing that is known is that this is going to be a lot more violent, gritty, and real than the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, looking to get an R-rating.

The film is being produced by Barry Josephson and the script is being written by David Franzoni (Gladiator, Amistad).

Below is a plot description from Mania, who got the exclusive on Greengrass [...]

It was Disney day today and in an event held at the Kodak Theater, the company announced some of its gigantic upcoming projects including Cars 2, Alice in Wonderland, and The Lone Ranger, and what Johnny Depp has to do with most of them.

In Tim Burton‘s upcoming CGI/3D/live-action (I’m not sure if anyone really knows WHAT it will actually be) take on the classic Alice in Wonderland story, Johnny Depp was long-rumored to be playing the Mad Hatter. Considering that he is now to Tim Burton what John Ratzenberger is to Pixar, we all knew this was likely and Disney confirmed today that Depp would indeed be taking on the role for his pal.

From what sounds like quite a spectacle, apparently the University of Southern California’s marching and came out, playing the Lone Ranger theme song [...]

Between 1976 and 1977, David Berkowitz murdered six people and wounded seven others in a series of attacks that terrorized New York City. He was dubbed the .44 Caliber Killer by newspapers and was self-titled the Son of Sam in a letter found near one of the shooting victims. After Berkowitz was finally arrested, in part due to an unpaid parking ticket, he cited both a Satanic cult he was supposedly a member of and his next door neighbor’s dog that was possessed by a demon who commanded him to go out and kill. This is Berkowitz’s story, as recounted through the imagination of Ulli Lommel.

Lommel, who has been making movies since the early 1970s, has seemingly made his post-2000 career out of writing and directing low budget direct-to-video tales about true-life serial killers or knockoffs of Hollywood fare. One would guess that after a handful of misses he’d finally get one right, but Son of Sam is not that film. Here, Lommel takes broad strokes with the most generic information about Berkowitz to paint a clearly unnecessary fictionalized account of the Son of Sam murders. Truth is always stranger than fiction [...]

As many of the episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as I have seen, and as many of them as I have reviewed for this site, I have always enjoyed them with bated breath. They are generally pretty funny in their own right but I can’t help that little whispering voice in the back of my head warning me that the other shoe is bound to drop. For a show with no real direction that can be described as controlled chaos at best, I have complained in previous reviews that the show was beginning to rely too much on a shock and awe approach rather than creating their own mythology that could carry the show through weaker episodes. I went back and watched a handful of old episodes on DVD before I previewed the first two episodes of season four: ‘Mac & Dennis: Manhunters’ and ‘The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis’. What I found out was that in their avoidance of being stuck with a label, they have created that mythology by default. They have taken Seinfeld’s mantra — “Nobody learns, nobody hugs” — to unforeseen heights [...]

Star of 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1 and two direct-to-DVD Stargate movies, Amanda Tapping is definitely one of geekdoms greatest stars. Spending a season on base at Stargate Atlantis, Tapping decided to then move on to her next project, a project she had started first on the internet.

Set almost entirely in front of virtual sets, the show stars Amanda Tapping as Dr. Helen Magnus, as she seeks out other mysterious creatures. Magnus is the first female doctor in the Royal College, her fiancé, played by Christopher Heyerdahl — also from Stargate Atlantis — manipulates time and space, allowing him to teleport. But each teleport trip manipulates his DNA, making him display more and more homicidal tendencies. He, of course, soon becomes known as Jack the Ripper [...]

If you’re like me, you were really looking forward to yesterday’s premiere of the third season of Heroes. Like a lot of people, I wasn’t so impressed with the second season, so it was nice to go back and re-watch the first season, which still holds up as one of the best set of episodes of the last few years. Watching these episodes again has reminded me why I enjoyed this show so much when it first started.

Of course, if you’ve seen the show before, you know all about the story. Various people around the world discover that they have extraordinary powers. They quickly learn that not only are they not alone, but that there are evil people who want to use their powers for nefarious deeds. Predictably, they save the cheerleader, they stop the exploding man, and they set up the beginning of the second season. What struck me most about these episodes is how well they hold up. Sure, I didn’t get the big surprises anymore, but I found myself really enjoying the performances and how all the story bits fit together. Little touches like Linderman’s name being mentioned in the first episode, the evolution of Mr. Bennet from villain to hero, and the build up and eventual reveal of series villain Syler. You can tell in the first season that the creators of the show had a plan of how the story would go and it made for really compelling TV [...]

Many sequels fall under the pressure of their predecessors. Disney made a great attempt to try and recreate the magic of the first 101 Dalmatians live-action film by re-casting Glenn Close, whose portrayal of the villain Cruella DeVil brought the first movie great success. Unfortunately, this film proved that only her performance was worth watching.

102 Dalmatians begins with the puppy-loving Ella, who has been rehabilitated from her evil puppy-hating ways and gets out of jail on parole. In order to acclimate back into society and to serve as a classic bit of comedic irony, she decides to save a dog pound that is threatened by eviction. Unfortunately her rehabilitation trance doesn’t last for long, with the sound of Big Ben, she snaps out of sweet kind Ella and turns back into the fur-obsessed Cruella DeVil.

I must say this movie definitely tops the wardrobe department from the last film. With the theme centered around fashion, it gave the costume designers a great opportunity to push the limit on what they could create using only black and white. Cruella’s wardrobe, which changed practically every five minutes, did keep me entertained and eager to see what she would be wearing next […]

It may almost seem a lame attempt at this point, hence why I didn’t name it so above, but this review really does continue my previous ‘Countdown to Clone Wars’ series of reviews. I could even get away with it, because The Clone Wars television series airs for the first time on Cartoon Network on October 3. But for the sake of my sanity, let us just call this a review.

But my thanks must first go to the fine folks at Dark Horse, who have graciously provided us with review material. I had hoped to provide you, the reader, with a look into the world of Star Wars Expanded Universe material. Sadly, that remained relegated to the books for a long time. But with the amount of Star Wars comics out there I felt I had to try and find a way to show them off as well.

And so, the first of three reviews, I’m going to be looking at Star Wars Rebellion [...]

We at Geeks of Doom have been closely following the long-time-coming sequel to super cult hit The Boondock Saints and have been keeping an especially close eye since learning it was apparently going to finally be a reality. Because of these facts, I was shocked to find a multitude of small, pre-production diaries that I had not seen or heard about. Better late than never, I say. Here’s some updates and video peeks at how The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day is moving along.

As for information, the crew is currently in Toronto in “pre-production” mode, scouting locations and all that good stuff. They’ll be doing that for seven or so weeks, which is where these videos are coming from. After all of that, the actual filming will begin on October 20, 2008 in Toronto for another seven weeks and will carry over to some shooting in Boston. Upon the start of filming, I assume we should start to see some production diary videos with Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, Billy Connolly, and other cast members […]

Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov has signed on to direct a big-screen reimagining of the Herman Melville classic Moby Dick for Universal Pictures.

Universal apparently paid a hefty six-figure sum to Adam Cooper and Bill Collage to pen the screenplay.

In the 1851 novel, the story is told from the perspective of a young sailor named Ishmael, who enlists in a whaling expedition aboard the Pequod, helmed by the obsessive Captain Ahab. Through Ishmael’s eyes, it’s revealed that on a previous voyage, the titular great white whale destroyed Ahab’s ship and bit off his leg, which is what’s fueling Ahab’s hunt for Moby-Dick and his need for revenge.

Cooper and Collage’s version will abolish the book’s first-person narrative in favor of a graphic novel-style version of the story. I guess that means we won’t be hear one of the most famous literary opening sentences — “Call me Ishmael.” The reasoning is so that they can show Moby-Dick’s destruction of other ships prior to its encounter with the Pequod. Also, “Ahab will be depicted more as a charismatic leader than a brooding obsessive [...]

Smallville Season 7 is, arguably, the weakest of the series’ run. In its early days this was a show that was unique in its attempt to bring Superman to the small-screen in a trendy way making it more popular than it ever has. My favorite seasons have to be 1-4, along with select episodes within the sixth installment of the series.

Superman lore was redefined in this series giving it more edge but also more personal drama one. In Season 7, much has happened to the Man of Steel but much hasn’t, after all these years, you’d think Clark Kent could begin his transformation from boy to man and become the great superhero we all know him to be. In other words, I thought in this series certain things would come to a close, such as loving Lana Lang, running around after the villain of the week, one step closer to flying, etc. Unfortunately I was wrong [...]

In this 1996 Disney offering, the studio dug into their animated back catalog to make a live-action version that was very faithful to their 1961 hit 101 Dalmatians.

As with the original, Roger (Jeff Daniels) and Anita (Joely Richardson) are thrown together when their dalmatians Pongo and Perdy fall in love and then play matchmaker with their owners. The foursome soon become a happy family living in their cozy London flat, with Perdy expecting puppies. Unfortunately, the evil, eccentric Cruella DeVil (Glenn Close) wants the puppies for herself so she can make a fur coat out of them. When Roger and Anita refuse to give her the puppies, Cruella resorts to getting her henchmen to abduct them.

There are very few differences from the animated version. In the live-action film, Roger is a video game developer instead of a songwriter, and Anita is actually a fashion designer at Cruella’s company. It’s at work that Anita creates a spotted design inspired by Perdy, which is what sparks Cruella’s obsession for a dalmatian coat [...]

Former Marvel CEO and Marvel Studios founder Avi Arad has obtained the rights to the incredibly popular recent video game, Mass Effect.

Arad has been a producer on pretty much every Marvel movie released — including the Spider-Man movies and Iron Man — and will still continue to produce some of their movies as he embarks on this new venture. His new company, Avi Arad Productions, produced the non-Marvel flick Bratz: The Movie and now looks to try and bring Mass Effect to the big screen.

Many will think a Mass Effect movie would never work, as the game allows you to create your own male or female character, choose all sorts of different potentially plot-changing paths, and even allows you to choose what you say in every one of the hundreds of conversations you’ll have. The fact is, none of that really matters. Some things that happen by choice are massive points of the story, but the core storyline is always the same and this would enable film makers to put together the best story they can build and even have some extra stuff to work with while still being faithful. Not many have that kind of breathing room with an adaptation [...]

A brand new red-band trailer for the upcoming film Role Models has been released.

Check it out here!

The film stars Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott as employees of an enery drink company who get in a little trouble. They’re sentenced to do some community service by helping out in a Big Brothers/Big Sisters-type organization where things aren’t all cute and rewarding as we’re led to believe. Ooh, and Paul Rudd’s kid is totally McLovin!

The movie’s original trailer looked pretty funny, but as is usual, this Red Band peek makes the movie look hilarious [...]

It is one of those things in my life, like Star Trek: Deep Space 9, that I just missed out on. It wouldn’t have been for lack of trying or interest, it’s just I never knew about Y The Last Man, just as I didn’t know how great DS9 was until after it had finished. It’s definitely on my “to-buy” pile, and though I know the ending, I’m still really looking forward to reading it.

But it looks as if I’d better get my act together, because director D.J. Caruso said that he has just turned in a script to Warner Bros. for the film adaptation of the Brian K. Vaughan comic book series, and that he hopes it will be the next film he and WB/New Line does.

According to Caruso, Warner Bros. “would really, really like to have the movie in late 2010” and that it will be the first of three films. As to who would portray the characters, Caruso wants Shia LaBeouf for Yorick and is interested in Alicia Keys for 355 [...]

In the third season of The CW’s Supernatural, one of the show’s sibling protagonists is in trouble: to quote the packaging itself, “the Doomsday Clock is ticking for Dean.” There’s a certain allegorical value to this statement: the show has always been quite soundly on the bubble with the network in terms of its potential cancellation, facing stiff competition in its timeslot, and potentially performing below expectations.

But, judging by the quality of the show’s third season, and the fan support given the series over the past year, it is clear that the Doomsday Clock is not ticking for Supernatural. Despite some roadblocks involving the introduction of new characters (always a difficult role for a series heading beyond its first few years), this strike-shortened season demonstrates the show’s central strength: two brothers, their fates intertwined, protecting humans from all things demonic and ghoulish.

And as long as Supernatural delivers on this promise, chances are that the Doomsday Clock will stay silent […]