It was on like Donkey Kong on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 as Scott Pilgrim made his triumphant return to the streets of Toronto! The midnight release of Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour held at the Beguiling at Markham and Bloor jammed a city block full of Ramona Flowers, Young Neils, The Evil Ex-Boyfriends, and of course, Scott Pilgrim himself!

With a dash of a book signing, a smattering of street festival, and a generous handful of comic book convention, the Midnight Release Party (organized totally over Facebook) for Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour was attended by well over 300 people and featured costume contests, prizes, and the man of the hour himself, Bryan Lee O’Malley, signing the sixth and final edition of his wildly popular Toronto-based comic book.

Check out images I took from the event here below.

A cult phenomenon since its launch in 2004, the graphic novel series combines hipster pop culture references, manga-influenced art, and the feel of a classic video game to tell the story of Scott Pilgrim, a 20-something bassist in Toronto, ON who must battle the Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriends to win the love of indie-nerd beauty queen Ramona Flowers [...]

Here’s a nice little freebie to brighten your day.

Yesterday Valve started giving away an updated version of the top down shooter Alien Swarm. It’s a pretty good game. I spent some time with it this morning and it’s very enjoyable. Especially for free! You go around with your team and well, fight alien swarms. There is actually a lot more to it than that. It is definitely a deep game for what it is.

On top of just the game, Valve is also giving away the complete base code to the game. I don’t know what I could do with that, but I bet those of you smarter than I am have a good idea. You have to have a steam account to get this game, however I didn’t have one and it was no sweat.

Click HERE for the free Alien Swarm [...]

What Ho! Doomers,

The time of year is upon us whence thousands and thousands of comic, movie, and video game fanatics descend upon the quaint city of San Diego to create a glorious flash-mob oasis of mass Geekdom. It’s 2010 Comic Con International, my peoples! This year’s convention is set to bring tons of Grade A geeky goodness to the world—from the likes of Radical, D.C., Disney, Dreamworks, Lionsgate, Marvel, and of course Universal’s upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which looks to be in tight competition with Tron Legacy for the largest advertising presence on the streets of San Diego.

The Geeks of Doom are here en masse and ready to kick Comic-Con’s A-Double-S. Reporting on location from our ad hoc Doom HQ (read: the Residence Inn, Gaslamp Quarter) with @henchman21, @eveofdoom, @guy_jen, @tched, and me, (@geeksofdoom), we’ll be bringing you the SDCC news from the panels and show floor as it happens. Also, we have a super special guest writer on hand this year (I’m so excited!) contributing his discerning opinion with exclusive daily wrap-ups from the ‘Con floor—the awesome & infamous @MrBabyMan! We’ll also be recording some special SDCC editions of our Doomcasts (@ComicsofDoom & @FlixofDoom) while we’re here to discuss and decompress from what’s sure to be a mass of sensory overload [...]

The spotlight deal of the day over Amazon today is Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology on Blu-ray for only $52.49 (that’s 60% off the list price of $129.95).

The blu-ray set comes with the four Batman films that were released from 1989 to 1997: Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns, and Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.

Note, this deal is only for today (Wednesday, July 21, 2010) until midnight PST while supplies last.

See below for a rundown of the special features included in this set [...]

Pictures from Kenneth Branagh‘s upcoming Marvel Studios production, Thor, have been making their way online fairly often as of late. One of the first official images (seen to the right) shows stars Chris Hemsworth as the hammer-wielding hero, Tom Hiddleston as his brother Loki, and Sir Anthony Hopkins front and center as their father, Odin.

Since that image was released a few more have showed up, and you can check them out here. One shows Odin and Thor again, another shows the great halls of Asgard along with the Warriors Three, and the latest shows Thor attempting to retrieve his mighty hammer.

Thor is expected to be a part of Marvel’s big weekend at the looming San Diego Comic Con, so hopefully these images are just a tease set up to precede some exciting footage.

Click on over to the other side to check out more images now! [...]

Microsoft announced an interesting promotion today. Each of the previous Gears of War games has had a rookie, from the Carmine family, that meets their doom over the course of the game. Whether or not this happens in the third game in the series is up to you. Starting July 29th, you can purchase one of two avatar t-shirts, one stating to save Carmine, the other for him to meet his demise. Whichever shirt sells the most is what will happen in the game.

Now before you start yelling “Money Grab!” like I almost did, all proceeds will will go to the Child’s Play charity, which if you are not familiar with is a great organization.

Lucky enough to be at Comic-Con in San Diego this week? You can grab one of these shirts in real life, at the NECA booth (#3145) for $20. I kind of hope he lives, but that seems unlikely [...]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was born by the mind of Robert Louis Stevenson and first appeared to the public in 1886. Since then, numerous adaptations of the character have shown up in all forms of entertainment, and this is still going strong today.

It’s being reported that Dark Horse Entertainment and Skydance Productions are teaming up to develop a movie adaptation of the upcoming title from Dark Horse Comics, The Strange Case of Hyde. The comic is written by Cole Haddon, who will also be handling the screenplay.

Instead of using Hyde as a monster, as he has been so many times in the past the character will be something of an anti-hero in the comic and subsequent movie. The Strange Case of Hyde will still be set in the Victorian era, but this time it will be the scene of an exciting action and adventure story that sees Hyde battling a historical villain. [...]

San Diego Comic-Con 2010 hasn’t officially started yet, but Marvel is getting itself a nice head start.

Released today are the images for two concept art mini-posters, to go along with Marvel’s self-proclaimed “blockbuster double header” movies. (Very bold, these movies had better be awesome!) One is for Thor, and the other for Captain America: The First Avenger.

They are both pretty sweet. I’ve been trying to decide which one I like best, and I guess I’d have to say the Captain America one.

Do you like them? Do you want one for your own? Well these beauties will be handed out at the Marvel booth (#2329) at the convention, which starts tomorrow for preview night, and Thursday for the official start. If you want one, you should hurry over as soon as the convention opens. I would not expect these to last long. Not making it to SDCC in sunny San Diego?

Click on the images below and you can pretend you got one. Enjoy! [...]

We have a couple of announcements out of Microsoft today. We have expected for a while that the motion controller, Kinect, would run $150. Well that was confirmed by Microsoft today. The controller would come with Kinect Adventures. Kinect launches November 4th.

Also announced today is an arcade version on the redesigned Xbox 360. This will run one penny shy of $200. It’s actually not a bad buy. It’s the same console as the $300 version, built in wifi, wireless controller, the whole bit. Difference is there is only 4 gigs of flash memory as opposed to a 250 gig hard drive. The new arcade console launches August 4th.

The best deal is the Kinect with Arcade bundle. Basically smash the above two paragraphs together and you get what’s in this bundle. This bundle launches same day as Kinect, November 4th [...]

Spider-Man and Evil Dead director Sam Raimi is adding another project to his growing list of things to do.

Once it was revealed that Raimi would no longer be needed for Spider-Man 4, he was able to concentrate on other potential gigs including one based on the popular MMO game World of Warcraft and a new take on The Wizard of Oz called Oz: The Great and Powerful. Now the director is adding one more to the pile, and it will be called Earp: Saints for Sinners.

The movie will be based on the comic book mini series of the same name from Radical Publishing. It tells the story of famed old west lawman Wyatt Earp…only in a way not historically known to us. This version of the story takes place just a short time in the future where the economy has crashed, the world has gone to hell, and we live in something resembling a post-apocalyptic wasteland. [...]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Vol. 7
DVD
Starring Dave Willis, Dana Snyder, Carey Means
Cartoon Network/Adult Swim
Release date: June 1, 2010

For the first three or four seasons, I was addicted to Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Hell, I even saw the Aqua Teen movie in the theater. Twice. But then I kind of fell off and missed a bunch of episodes, so this Vol 7 DVD set of the show is the first with episodes that I haven’t seen before. I watched this trying to find out if the show had regained whatever it was that I loved about the earlier seasons.

There are a lot of good episodes on this set, but I still think the show has lost whatever it was that made me love those first few seasons. I don’t know if I’m just tired of the humor, or if the jokes are just over used, but there just aren’t as many quotable lines as there used to be. There are still some good episodes, including the return of Dr. Wongburger, and an episode with Hitler returned as a balloon.

Also included in this set is the live-action episode featuring T-Pain, H. Jon Benjamin, and contest winner Dave Long as Carl. The live-action episode was a great experiment, but I don’t think it worked out as well as I hoped it would. It’s really just not that funny, other than being even more absurdist than the show normally is [...]

Green Hornet: Year One #4
Written by Matt Wagner
Art by Aaron Campbell
Cover by John Cassaday
Dynamite Entertainment
Price: $3.99
Release date: July 2010

When I was a kid and the FX Network first started they would show the classic episodes of The Green Hornet and I would watch every single one of them. I looked up the Green Hornet back then. Well now our favorite green hat hero and trusty sidekick have their own comic series, Green Hornet: Year One.

I love this series because it tells the origins of these two characters and how they first started fighting crime in the streets of Chicago. Green Hornet: Year One #4 focuses on not only the Green Hornet and Kato taking on the mob in Chicago, but on Kato’s origin as well.

The issue was written very well by Matt Wagner and brings light to some of the questions I had about Kato when I was a kid [...]

Here’s an interesting little bit for the growing number of movie fans who have wondered just what has happened to director M. Night Shyamalan over the years.

Now that The Last Airbender has arrived, leaving in its wake one of the biggest collection of negative reviews ever seen, everyone wants to know why such a major decline in quality has taken place and why Shyamalan keeps getting to make more movies. One reporter during a press conference in Mexico City decided to stand up and ask the director — with the utmost professionalism, I might add — what we’ve all wanted to ask him. Shyamalan didn’t take it so well.

Click over to the other side to check out the video now!

In case you have trouble making out what’s being said in the video below, here’s the basic idea. The question that the reporter asks is “Your movies have been very personal. However, the audience has lost its faith in your work, with Lady in the Water and many of your more recent productions. Airbender feels like you want to captivate the audiences again by becoming more commercial. Am I right?” [...]

Surfing is one of those sports that can be mind-boggling to watch. With one massive wave, the very best in the world can deliver a beautiful and hypnotic run…or crumble under the powerful water beast in devastating fashion. The fact that these athletes need to not only be incredibly well-balanced and dexterous but that they need to wait for nature’s fury to collaborate with them in order to create the perfect run makes it all the more compelling.

Each year, the planet’s biggest, brightest, and up and coming talents gather at the ultimate proving ground: Oahu’s North Shore in Hawaii. They call it the “7 Mile Miracle” and it’s where the Triple Crown takes place starting around Halloween and ending just before Christmas. Three events to close out each professional surfing season and the highest level of competition among 400 participants in pursuit of eternal glory.

Highwater is a documentary from director Dana Brown that gives us a deep-rooted look into just what goes down during the Triple Crown. The director previously made the acclaimed Step Into Liquid, and he is the son of surf documentary legend Bruce Brown (The Endless Summer). [...]

Earlier this month a rumor made the rounds that Mike Judge might be working on 30 brand new episodes of his 1990s animated hit series, Beavis and Butt-Head.

The New York Post has made fans of the show who have longed for a return very happy today. Sources from MTV have confirmed that these rumors are not rumors at all, and that Judge is indeed working on new episodes of Beavis and Butt-Head. It’s not clear if the number of new episodes is 30, but in any case some new animated stupidity is on the way to us.

According to the source it looks like the cheapish “drawn on your notebook during class” animation style will remain intact, though this probably isn’t as crucial as it sounds. A movie version of the show called Beavis and Butt-Head Do America was released in 1996 using a little bit more refined animation, but still worked well. So long as they stick with one of these two and don’t make any major changes fans should be content. [...]

Ozzy Osbourne
Scream
Produced by Ozzy Osbourne, Kevin Churko
Epic
Released June 21, 2010

Drug abuse, alcoholism, animal blood, quad bike crashes, his wife — many have tried and some have come incredibly close to handing his (im)mortal soul over to the cold embrace of the grim reaper, but it seems nothing can kill rock super-god, Ozzy Osbourne.

I am a huge fan of Ozzy-era Black Sabbath and listening to those albums inevitably led me to the Ozzy solo albums. When I listen to any new Ozzy album I pretty much know what I’m going to get — a livelier, faster, even lighter sound than his previous band, it’s just whether he can deliver on all that hope I reserve for the original Black Sabbath lead singer. So far he hasn’t let me down and this year the Prince of Darkness released his tenth solo album, Scream [...]

Jen marvels at The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Vactor dreams of Inception. All the while queen of the podcast, Eve Of Doom, checks out The Losers. The geeks are joined for this special double episode by Hunter Camp from the Gotham Central and Comics of Doom podcasts to discuss Shutter Island.

Check out Episode 3 of the Flix of Doom podcast, the official movie podcast of Geeks of Doom, where the hosts discuss the new Christopher Nolan film Inception and take a look at Leonardo DiCaprio‘s career, along with this week’s box office and movie news.

Click HERE to open the podcast player in a new window.

Full Episode Guide is here below, along with player.

Listen now! [...]

Before you enter this post drooling with anticipation for that God of War movie you’ve been waiting so very long for, allow me to clarify: no, there is no movie based on the hit video game God of War being made. Not yet, anyway. Don’t forget — not too long ago it looked like Brett Ratner would be directing, so an eternal wait is not the worst thing in the world.

To hold us over for now, Gamervision decided to make their own trailer for a God of War movie, only with an interesting spin on the presentation. Instead of an explosive trailer showing of a guaranteed epic summer blockbuster, the site went with more of a dry indie film vibe, and it happens to work really well. Whodathunkit?

Use your own homemade god weapons and abilities to get on over to the other side and check out this indie God of War trailer immediately. [...]

Inception – **1/2
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine
Release date: July 16, 2010

A thief of dreams is one who drowns out the purities of cinema, cashing in on the big budget extravaganzas and deterring from the simplicity of storytelling in favor of an extremely intellectual web of narrative that proves to be in the long run too tedious, too sophisticated, and too savvy for its own good. Ideas are extrapolated from the likes of Freud and Jung, then are mixed with cinematic concepts spanning from 2001: A Space Odyssey, to BladeRunner and to The Matrix. All of this and more occurs in Inception, a refreshing film that seems to have forgotten how a great cinematic tale can be told with such simplicity.

What is meant to confound the mind in a stimulating and energetic manner turns into a rather laborious process that gives us a contemptuous attitude towards a film that dares the impossible: it perceives colossal dreams and attempts to make them possible (key word there being ‘attempt’). An exuberant imagination, even an overwhelming fury of inventive images, is displayed before us with hopes of redefining not only the sci-fi genre, but the entire panorama of cinema. The elaborate logistical demands of director and screenwriter Christopher Nolan’s film is a cause for celebration only because he is audacious enough to go dream them up and apply them to his film. He conjures up an inconceivable idea that obliterates the familiar landmarks of cinema and troubles the mind profoundly, but in a way that is detrimental to his film [...]

Some TV shows jump out at you from nowhere and immediately eclipse every other program you have a current interest in. The writing is sharper, the jokes are funnier, the direction is better, the actors are superior — this, you decide, is how television should be. If you’re not watching your new favourite thing you’re not watching anything. With numerous other programs already clogging up your TV signal, finding a show this special is very rare. Arrested Development is one of those shows.

Arrested Development is about the Bluth family, a rich, spoiled bunch who own a large property company which supports their frivolous lives. Thanks to years of dodgy dealings and acts of ‘light treason’ by head of the family and business, George (Jeffrey Tambor), the Bluth family now has no money and its assets are drying up fast.

The main focus is on middle son Michael (Jason Bateman), who wants to keep his family together for the sake of his son, George-Michael (Michael Cera). This becomes a herculean and very often thankless task. As the old saying goes: blood is thicker than water — and many of the Bluth family are thicker than blood [...]