This week, Google buys a quantum computer, Yahoo buys instant cool with Tumblr and spruces up tired old Flickr, Aereo & Arrested Development disrupt Big Media, and Microsoft launches the next-generation of XBox. Plus, our review of Star Trek: Into Darkness! [...]

The Drill Down 278 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In honor of the fiftieth edition of Disney In Depth – can you believe it? – I thought I would devote this edition to diagnosing you with “Disneyitis.” What is this condition? Well, it is when any of these 50 signs representing a Disney geek apply to you.

Continue below now to find out if you’re a true Disney fanatic.

1. You have more pairs of Mouse Ears in your closet than you do baseball caps (and you occasionally wear the ears when nobody’s around).

2. When giving someone directions, you use the Disney two-finger point (because you’re an unabashed Disney nerd). [...]

Each and every week, I, “Mechagodzilla” Henchman21, and “SpaceGodzilla” Empress Eve read a lot of comics. Seriously you guys, a lot of comics. Maybe too many comics. I mean, it is possible… theoretically. Naturally, we look forward to some more than others. I mean, who doesn’t? So, let’s take a look into the depths of our pull lists, grab some comics, and we’ll let YOU know what the top books to look forward to are for the week of May 22, 2013. Single issues and trades, they’re all here.

Well, it’s another week and we’ve got another hot stack of comics to keep you entertained. There’s a lot to look forward to this week, including some exciting new series and the end to an epic run on one of DC’s biggest characters. We’ve also got a collection of one of the best series of last year and plenty more. So let’s not waste any more time, The GoD List is go! [...]

Today marks the 24th anniversary of the passing of famed SNL alumnus Gilda Radner, who was the show’s first break out female superstar; who dazzled American audiences coast to coast with a wide array of memorable characters; who was part of the very first wave of the show and instrumental to its success; and who set a tone and standard for the many successful female SNL players who followed in the wake of her. Radner died at the age of 42, on May 20, 1989, of ovarian cancer.

All but forgotten by today’s staunch SNL audience, who witnesses a show which is now in its 39th year on the air and is a much, much different one than the one that premiered in October 1975, Radner nonetheless still remains one of the greatest personalities to come from the program. [...]

The long-awaited season finale of Doctor Who series 7 is here, a climax that showrunner Steven Moffat and the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) have been racing towards (or running from?) for quite some time: “The Name Of The Doctor.” From the prophecy uttered, we witness the fall of the Eleventh, as the Doctor is forced to go to the place he must never go: Trenzalore – to a confrontation that will change everything forever for both the Doctor and for his companion Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) in which his greatest secret is finally revealed…

During TARDISblend 66, we discuss the major gamechanging spoilers that came out in force during the season finale, but also look at what it means for the upcoming 50th Anniversary Special. We touch on the role of River Song (Alex Kingston) in this episode, and the inferential implications within Moffat’s writing of the character.

We also look towards what’s next for Doctor Who, from the 50th to Christmas to Series 8, and lay out the possibilities for a wager laid down for the future of this very podcast. And finally, we review YOUR comments from our episodes this season. All this and more on the latest TARDISblend! [...]

For the past few weeks or so there’s been a debate raging on and on about whether or not bigger, more well-known names and titles should be using the crowd funding website Kickstarter to try and find help with financing their next project.

It began when Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas took to the site for help in making a movie based on his cancelled show, a movie that had been attempted numerous times and failed all of them. Kickstarter was the last resort, and it came through overwhelmingly as fans of the show chipped in and helped the project reach its $2 million goal easily. By the time the campaign was said and done, $5.7 million had been raised for the movie, and a new doorway was opened wide for filmmakers and others.

Not many gave a second thought to the Veronica Mars movie turning to Kickstarter for help; it wasn’t until recently that the debate truly ignited when Zach Braff, the star of the hit sitcom Scrubs and writer/director/producer/star of Garden State, decided to see if Kickstarter could help him make his follow-up to Garden State, Wish I Was Here. Not only did the movie also quickly achieve its $2 million goal, but it ignited quite the firestorm as many argued the merits of the successful or wealthy asking regular folks to pay for their projects to happen. [...]

Happy 68th Birthday today to one of the greats of rock and roll, British and otherwise, a true genius and original in his craft, who not only showed the world what he could do with an electric guitar, but what could also be done with the rock song itself in the way it could be elevated to operatic mythos and all its glories, the man, the leader of The Who, guitarist Pete Townshend.

It’s kind of incredible when you think about the work of Pete Townshend and the overall underrated kind of perception he and The Who have when it comes to one quickly rattling off the names of the great bands and musicians during the arguable golden age of electric rock and roll, the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. For sure, there are a handful of Who songs that remain blended in with the all-time classics on compilations and classic rock radio and the like, but when you really take into account a band and a man who put so much craft, energy, scope, influence, and sweat and grit into the amount of work that made their bands what they are, Pete Townshend becomes a figurehead who towers high above the rest [...]

Vanilla Sky
Netflix | Amazon | Epix | Google Play | SEN | Vudu | YouTube
DVD
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Starring Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz, Kurt Russell, Jason Lee, Cameron Diaz, Noah Taylor, Timothy Spall
Paramount Pictures
Originally Released: December 14, 2001

Vanilla Sky is one of those movies that, for one reason or another, I never got around to seeing – until now. And it also happens to be one of those movies that nobody ever says, "Meh, it was okay". Cameron Crowe’s surreal swirl of romance, sci-fi, thriller, and drama is a divisive piece of work, resulting in the vast majority of viewers either loving it or loathing it.

So that being said, there’s very little I can say within the circumstance of this review about this movie that will sway you one way or the other. Vanilla Sky is just one of those flicks you have to see for yourself, and make your own mind up about.

But whichever end your mind is made up about – one thing is certain: Vanilla Sky will fuck with your head [...]

This week, YouTube launches subscription channels, Amazon mints its own digital currency, BlackBerry messaging comes to iOS & Android, the Tesla S gets the highest praise, and all the latest from Google’s I/O developer conference [...]

The Drill Down 277 [ 1:53:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Another great Kickstarter project to take a peek at if you’re looking for something new to back, Harbinger Down is a horror movie that promises to have not one single CGI creature.

Most movie purists loathe the over-saturated world of CGI that we now live in, and crave the practical effects that are being used less and less every day as movie studios sacrifice quality to save a little coin. This makes a project like Harbinger Down all the more appealing.

The movie is being made by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. and their company Amalgamated Dynamics, a practical effects workshop that has worked on many movies, including Tremors, Alien 3, Starship Troopers, and the recent remake of The Thing. They’ve also got some industry friends who are going to help them make the movie who have worked on movies like Aliens, Terminator 2, and The Empire Strikes Back, just to name a few. Between them all, they have four Oscar wins and ten nominations.

Continue reading for more info and to see a video from the filmmakers on why you should pledge and help them make this movie. [...]

Disney In Depth encompasses topics across all branches of Disney, even the occasional focus on the Alphabet Network.

This edition of the column previews ABC’s new Fall 2013 line-up of programming, which contains an assortment of offerings and even a few Disney tie-ins.

Continue below to check out the list of upcoming shows. [...]

By Amy Vernon

Look, I’m no fan of the whole “Disney Princess” canon. I’m not even sure most of them are actually princesses, but that’s really splitting hairs.

I usually don’t give it much thought, though, except to betray my feminist leanings and be glad I have boys and don’t have to deal with shelves of pink when we go to the toy store (let’s face it, I’d still be shopping in the toy car and superhero section even if I had girls).

But when news broke the other week that Disney was adding Merida from Brave to its princess collection, I was a bit taken aback at the image I saw.

Gone was the frizzy hair. The dress they put her in was the shiny, princess-y one she hated in the movie, not her preferred garb. Her eyes were rounder and had a certain come-hither look to them. Suddenly, her waist was Barbie-sized and she had breasts.

Gosh, I guess she grew up fast [...]

Each and every week, I, “Muscle Man” Henchman21, and “High Five Ghost” Empress Eve read a lot of comics. Seriously you guys, a lot of comics. Maybe too many comics. I mean, it is possible… theoretically. Naturally, we look forward to some more than others. I mean, who doesn’t? So, let’s take a look into the depths of our pull lists, grab some comics, and we’ll let YOU know what the top books to look forward to are for the week of May 15, 2013. Single issues and trades, they’re all here.

No time. Tired. Buy. Read. Comics. The GoD List!!!! [...]

Shane Black‘s Iron Man 3 has already grossed over $700 million worldwide, and while a box office success, it isn’t unanimously beloved by critics or audiences like Marvel’s last homerun, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the popular aggregate movie review website, Iron man 3 currently sits at 78% (67% among top critics). On Metacritic, a more analytical aggregate site, Black’s film currently scores 62 out of 100. To put things in perspective, two of 2012′s most divisive blockbuster films amongst fanboys, The Dark Knight Rises and Prometheus, are locked in at 84% and 74% respectively. Iron Man 2, the black sheep of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is at 73%.

In my review, I took issue with misplaced character motivations and the way co-writers Shane Black and Drew Pearce approached Iron Man’s greatest foe, the Mandarin. Well, even after a 1,300-word review, I’m still not finished talking about Iron Man 3. The only way to get over my disappointment with the third (and hopefully final) Iron Man film was to write about how great it could have been if it wasn’t, well, the movie it turned out to be.

So, in an effort to channel the passion and insanity of Patton Oswalt’s epic Star Wars/Avengers rant on NBC’s Parks and Recreation, here are some thoughts on what should have happened in Iron Man 3 [...]

The penultimate episode of Doctor Who Series 7, written by Neil Gaiman, finds the Doctor (Matt Smith) providing an unexpected trip for Clara’s (Jenna-Louise Coleman) children that she cares for in her nanny job. The group ends up on Hedgewick’s World Of Wonders, an abandoned intergalactic theme park that has found itself in some considerable ruin.

But the planetary amusement park is not empty – Webley (Jason Watkins) and Porridge (Warwick Davis) still remain as previous owners/workers; and a detachment of troops from the Great and Bountiful Human Empire strategically stay on planet. Behind the scenes though, a sinister menace has been waiting in dormancy, preparing for its rise to domination. The arrival of the Doctor has caused the awakening of this Nightmare In Silver, and the Cybermen are more menacing than ever…

During TARDISblend 65, we discuss what is arguably one of the best episodes of Series 7, and perhaps the best Cybermen story since the Classic series. We also dig into secrets associated with next week’s Series Finale, entitled The Name Of The Doctor, and briefly touch on some of the rumors surrounding the 50th Anniversary Special.

All this and more on the latest TARDISblend! [...]