Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter & Under the Hood
DVD, Blu-ray, VoD
Directed by Mike Smith & Daniel DelPurgatorio (Black Freighter)/Eric Matthies (Under the Hood)
Starring Gerard Butler, Stephen McHattie, Carla Gugino
Warner Home Entertainment
Release date: March 24, 2009

And you thought we were done with our Watchmen coverage? Well Warner Brothers has a few more dimes they can squeeze out of the property, so now we get a stand-alone DVD release of a couple of glorified special features. Is this disc worth buying, especially knowing that the animated section of this disc will be on the eventual DVD release of Watchmen? I’d say yes, if you’re a big fan of the book or the movie (or, like me, both). More casual fans will probably be okay waiting for these to be included when the regular movie comes out on DVD.

The good thing to say about this is that the two features here — Tales of the Black Freighter and Under The Hood — are both very well done. First you get the main draw of the disc, the animated feature Tales of the Black Freighter. Readers of the book will know what this is, but for those who haven’t read the book, the Black Freighter is a pirate comic that is told in conjunction with the main story and serves as an allegory for those events. It the story of a captain (voiced by Gerard Butler) whose ship is attacked by the titular Black Freighter, and then must struggle to get to his home before the freighter crew kills his family [...]

Quantum of Solace [Blu-ray]
Directed by Marc Forester
Starring Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric
Paramount Home Entertainment
Release Date: March 24, 2009

The James Bond series could very well go on forever. Even after 20 films, it is possible to reinvigorate the series, as the films starring Daniel Craig have proven. Honestly, I have never been a big fan of Bond and hearing that the series was going to be rebooted with Craig didn’t seem to be anything worth getting excited over. Well, I was wrong, and happy to admit it.

Though it may be sacrilegious to say so, doing away with the cheesy gadgets, the overly suggestive character names, and even the one-liners have saved this series, and it’s obvious the new Bond will not be anything like the old ones. A scene in Casino Royale really established the mentality of the new series in relation to the old, as a bartender asks Bond if he wants his martini shaken or stirred, he snaps back “Do I look like I give a damn!?” The new bond is darker, more realistic (not that that is a stretch), and much more intense [...]

You’ve all probably seen them a couple hundred times. Guitar Hero commercials directed by Brett Ratner, featuring sports stars and supermodels in a parody of Tom Cruise’s famous Risky Business scene. And if you’re like myself, you can’t stand them and change the channel immediately before anyone slides their goofy asses onto the screen.

In preparation for the brand new Guitar Hero: Metallica edition, though, two more commercials were filmed using the same basic premise, but these commercials are actually pretty entertaining.

The first commercial will most likely only be funny to sports fans and college basketball fans. Instead of the mega-star athletes and models, the commercial features legendary (and older) college basketball coaches: Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Rick Pitino, and Bob Knight. After these gentleman do their best Risky Business attempt is when Metallica shows up and it gets pretty funny — especially if you’re familiar with Bob Knight and his infamous temper.

The second commercial is all about Metallica and it really needs no description — you just have to watch it. [...]

Every now and then we here at Geeks of Doom get some great contests to run for movie fans. Today, that contest is for fans of Fast & Furious!

As you’re probably all already well-aware, the fourth installment in the franchise hits theaters this Friday, April 3, 2009. It will be a monumental occasion for fans of the movies who have been screaming for the reuniting of the original cast — a reunion that is now finally here with Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster all back for this new, and sure-to-be purely adrenaline-fueled ride of a movie.

If you are one of the many fans of the Fast & Furious franchise and you want to win yourself a prize package jam packed with all kinds of crazy and fun things, then you need only scroll down a bit and get involved immediately!

One (1) winner will receive:

1 Hat
1 T-shirt
1 Mint box filled with candy
1 Frisbee
1 Matchbook condom
1 Tire stress reliever
1 Drawstring tote bag
1 Mini lantern
1 Poster [...]

His name isn’t one you may know. His resume isn’t packed with top roles . He hasn’t won all kinds of awards. But when it comes to Andy Hallet, he is a man that has a big place in the hearts of geeks everywhere. Hallet is known for his work as the funny and lovable demon known as Lorne or The Host on the popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off — Angel. Hallet passed away on March 29, 2009 due to heart failure after a five-year battle with heart disease.

Even those who were simply only familiar with Angel, and who maybe saw an episode or two would have no problem identifying the green-skinned demon who was always wildly dressed in brightly colored suits. But those who knew and loved the show: those are the people that know that the heart that Andy Hallet brought to this character shined through in every one of the 76 episodes he appeared in.

Show creator Joss Whedon saw him singing at a Universal City Blues revue, which is when the idea for the character came to him. [...]

In one of the more unexpected movie sequel announcements, it looks like director David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen will be making a follow-up to 2007′s Eastern Promises.

The thinking here is that the ending of Eastern Promises left a whole lot more story to be told. Even though Cronenberg isn’t one to do sequels, another reason he wants to do this is because he very much enjoys working with Mortensen, saying that he “…consider him personal friend,” and that he is a “…very special guy.” This would mark the third project for the pair, which started with A History of Violence.

Here is what Cronenberg thinks of sequels in general, as well as why this one could work:

I’ve never had the desire to do that before. But in this case, I thought we had unfinished business with those characters. I didn’t feel that we had finished with Nikolai and we had done a lot of research that was more than we could stuff into that one movie.

The director also had this to say about how they were going to go about the project: [...]

If you’re like me, you’ve been waiting desperately for information on the mega-sequel that is BioShock 2. We got a peek at the interesting teaser trailer (Read: ‘BioShock 2′ Teaser Trailer!), but that was simply a wink. What we really wanted, was some details, and now we have just that.

The cover story for the April 2009 issue of Game Informer magazine tackles BioShock 2 full force, and the information coming through, is, well… interesting indeed!

The game will take place almost a decade after the events that we experienced in the first game. Rapture is in worse shape than ever; splicers are on a new level of psychotic; and the Big Sister is running the show. The Big Sister (it sounds as if there is only one, but who knows) is a faster, more dangerous version of the Big Daddy who travels to coastal towns and cities and kidnaps little girls to bring back to Rapture as Little Sisters. Click the image above to see the full-size magazine cover and a look at the Big Sister! [...]

The Gold Box spotlight deal of the day over at Amazon today is Boston Legal Seasons 1-4 on DVD for $80.49 (that’s 65% of the list price of $229.92). Amazon has these selling at $38-$46 per season (totally $171), so this is a huge discount on the four-pack.

Created by David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, The Practice, Picket Fences), Boston Legal is the spin-off of The Practice and follows the lives of the lawyers at the firm Crane, Poole & Schmidt. It stars Candice Bergen, James Spader, and most importantly William Shatner in probably his most beloved role since Captain James T. Kirk.

In this television legal drama, Shatner plays one of the partners, Denny Crane, who believes himself to be quite the great attorney and boosts about never losing a case. But with age, Crane begins to have memory problems causing his top-notch courtroom skills to dwindle, though his ego remains intact. His antics are a big part of what keeps the show from being another dry law drama, and while initially Crane wasn’t meant to be the central focus, there’s no denying that Shatner has brought to life yet another iconic character [...]

A cool little teaser poster for Guy Ritchie‘s Sherlock Holmes was noticed by Latino Review while at the ShoWest movie convention.

The poster isn’t the most exciting ever made, but its simplicity is its strong point and I like it a lot.

As we know, the movie is to be that of an origins story, telling of how Sherlock Holmes met Watson, and how he started toward becoming a legendary detective. I don’t remember the exact quote, but I believe someone once compared the movie to James Bond, but in 1891.

There’s also another Sherlock movie of the more comical variety in the works from producer Judd Apatow with Sascha Baron Cohen as Holmes and Will Ferrell as Watson.

Click above to check out a smaller version of the poster that /Film was kind enough to clean up and make pretty, or click over to check out the original, full-sized picture!

The movie stars Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock, Jude Law as Mr. Watson, Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, and Mark Strong as Lord Blackwood. The Ritchie-directed script is written by Lionel Wigram and it is based on the characters and stories created by Arthur Conan Doyle. [...]

In case you missed it not too long ago, it was announced that Family Guy was able to grab all of the actors from Star Trek: The Next Generation to voice themselves in a special episode of the show. (Read: Family Guy To Reunite Star Trek Cast)

In the episode, the Griffin family visit a local Star Trek convention where the cast of Next Generation hold a Q&A panel. Unfortunately, little Stewie doesn’t get the chance to ask any of his questions, which obviously infuriates him. He then proceeds to build his own personal transporter, and brings the entire cast to his bedroom to hang out with him and have some fun around town for the day.

Voices will include: Levar Burton, Gates McFadden, Michael Dorn, Wil Wheaton, Denise Crosby, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes.

Click over to the other side to check out a special preview video of the show from Hulu, and tune in tonight at 9PM EST on Fox to watch the episode! [...]

I’m a big fan of The Golden Girls. Though I followed the series back in the 1980′s, I still enjoy watching episodes in syndication today and every so often I catch something I didn’t notice years ago. For instance, in the 1987 episode “Whose Face Is This Anyway?”, Rose (Betty White) mentions the 1974 Sean Connery science fiction film Zardoz.

In the episode, the vain Blanche (Rue McClanahan) attends her college sorority’s reunion thinking she’ll be the most beautiful one there. When she gets there, she feels that her natural beauty is nothing compared to the other women, who’ve all had plastic surgery. When she returns home, she tells her friends that when she got to the reunion, it was as if time stood still for 30 years and the other women looked like they’d hardly aged at all.

That’s when the airheaded Rose (played by Betty White) says these women sound a lot like the ones from the movie Zardoz. She asks Blanche, “Did any of them mention a leader named Zardoz?”

For those of you unfamiliar with Zardoz, it starred Sean Connery as a scantily-clad Exterminator, a member of a warrior class who worship a God head known as Zardoz on a futuristic post-apocalypse Earth. I’ll tell you right now, this move is horrible and basically unwatchable [...]

A new chapter in the Ghostbusters franchise has been rumored for years and years and years. While a movie never seemed to actually be a possibility, we eventually found out that we would be getting a video game with most of the actors offering their voices to the project — meaning that this was our third movie. Not too long after that, though, it was announced that Year One and The Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky were actually working on a script for Ghostbusters 3, which would likely have a new group of younger and currently popular ‘Busters.

Now that we’re all caught up, original member and writer Harold Ramis recently spoke to MTV and wouldn’t ya know it, he claims that if the movie does get done, all original Ghostbusters will reprise their roles!

Now before you get too excited, Ramis was a little vague. To me it sounds like the boys will have roles, but they’ll be more appearances as mentors to the group of new, younger Ghostbusters. [...]

Street Fighter IV
Genre: Fighting
Rating: 12 (VSC Rating)
Publisher: Capcom
Format: Xbox 360, PS3, (Coming soon to PC), Arcade

Chances are, you’ve already heard about Capcom’s legendary Street Fighter series – Street Fighter 2 was/is the benchmark for almost every 1v1 fighting game that exists today. If you haven’t, then you’re either not a gamer, or haven’t set foot in an arcade in the last 15+ years.

SF2 is quite possibly one of my favourite games of all time – it is (in my opinion) one of the most polished and flawless fighting games to date, even if it’s 2D. The game’s combo system and tactical gameplay makes it fun for beginners to pick up, and great for hardcore players to arrange tournaments around (which in turn makes for some amazing viewing).

Capcom haven’t been able to match the original Street Fighter 2’s quality for a long time (the closest they came for me was Street Fighter Alpha 2), and in the development of their latest release; Street Fighter IV, you can tell they’ve gone back to the roots of the series. Capcom did attempt delving into the world of a 3D Street Fighter before, with the Street Fighter Ex series – these, although good in their own right, were overshadowed by games like Tekken and Dead or Alive [...]

MySpace has debuted the final U.S. theatrical poster for Star Trek.

Check out the new poster here at right. We’ll have the hi-res version on Monday.

Several international posters appeared online this week for the upcoming eleventh Trek. Check ‘em out here below (via TrekMovie).

The final U.S. poster doesn’t really thrill me or remind me of any previous Trek films. My favorite one of the new bunch is the UK variant poster (that also has a German version), which it reminds me of the First Contact poster. The regular UK version is a lot like Star Trek V, while the Spanish version is reminiscent of Star Trek IV with the Golden Gate Bridge as the focus [...]

Simon Pegg is raring up for the release of his next movie, Star Trek, as most fans and people involved with the movie are. But within the chaos of that project, Pegg took the time to inform his fans via his MySpace blog that he would be lending his voice to the next installment in the Ice Age series — Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Pegg will be playing a one-eyed weasel named Buck, who will apparently be a little out of his mind due to an extended period of time living in solitude.

Click on over for the full announcement from Mr. Pegg!

Well it’s been reported on Empire Online, so I guess it’s out there. For the last year, I have been working with those splendid folks over at Blue Sky Studios, creators of the Ice Age series on the latest and surely greatest installment, Dawn Of The Dinosaurs. The third Ice Age movie sees Manny, Diego and the gang lost in a mysterious, subterranean, prehistoric wilderness populated by everyone’s favorite extinct species. [...]