The Nightly Nerdlinger News epi 9

The Incredible Hulk


William Hurt has joined the all-star cast of Marvel Studios' "The Incredible Hulk." The movie, which Louis Leterrier is directing, sees Bruce Banner/Hulk on the run, trying to avoid capture long enough to cure the condition that turns him into a monster. Hurt will play Gen. Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, the man who has dedicated his life to capturing the Hulk -- and who also is the father of Banner's love interest, Betty Ross."Hulk" is shaping up to having one of the stronger comic book movie casts in quite a while as Hurt joins two-time Oscar nominee Edward Norton, who is playing Banner, Liv Tyler as Betty and Tim Roth as villain Emil Blonsky/the Abomination. Zak Penn wrote the latest big-screen adventure of the green goliath, which Universal Pictures is distributing.The film is being produced by Avi Arad, Gale Anne Hurd and Kevin Feige, while Jim Van Wyck, David Maisel, Ari Arad and Stan Lee executive produce. Shooting is slated to begin this summer in Toronto.

Source: HR

Vermsnote: This Hulk sounds like it will be so much better than the last one, which I did like, mostly, but still, let's hope. Plus it has Liv Tyler! Liv=love

Oh wow! A modernized Dante's Inferno by stick animated cardboard cutouts!

You have GOT to check this out. I love Inferno, always have, I've read or seen maybe a dozen versions of it, from the standard high school translation in Brit Lit to the cool graphic novel Sinergy. Check out the trailer and the website, you'll be amazed.

Thanks to twitch for the heads up.


Dragon War


This looks pretty damn cool, dragons fighting in LA. Due out this summer in Japan, should be here not too long afterwards hopefully. It only took The Host a few months to make the leap.



D-war






Science Fiction Dictionary

Editor/lexicographer Jeff Prucher told SCI FI Wire that his book Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction attempts to cover the shared language of science fiction writers, critics and fans—as well as those terms that originated in SF and have subsequently been adopted by mainstream society or other subcultures. "By 'shared language,' I mean those terms that have been used (in more or less the same sense) by several writers in multiple settings," Prucher said in an interview. "Thus a word like 'dilithium,' which will be familiar to most people, is not included, since it has little use outside the Star Trek universe, but a word like 'ansible,' which is most often associated with Ursula K. Le Guin's works, is included since other authors have subsequently used the term." Brave New Words is also a historical dictionary, which means that, in addition to the usual dictionary content (definitions, parts of speech, etymologies, etc.), each definition is supported by citations taken from a variety of sources, Prucher said. "These citations play a variety of different roles. One of the chief ones is to show the earliest known use of a term in a given sense. But they can also show how a word has been used over time or be used to indicate variant spellings and even to some extent show when words have been used in non-SF contexts." The dictionary is in many ways an offshoot of an ongoing project of the Oxford English Dictionary, which is actively seeking evidence for words related to science fiction, Prucher said. "The project maintains a Web site that lists all the terms the OED is interested in; anybody is welcome to contribute, and they've collected several thousand citations this way," he said. "I've been involved in the project for some time, first just as an enthusiastic contributor and later as one of the site's administrators." Prucher sees the dictionary as filling several roles, he said. "On the one hand, it is a serious dictionary, and I hope it will be both a valuable contribution to lexicography and to the study of science fiction and popular culture," he said. "On the other hand, I hope that most people will read it at least partly for enjoyment—I think that there is a lot of pleasure to be had in reading through the citations, finding connections between words, maybe being reminded of forgotten works or discovering that a familiar term is older (or newer) than you thought or has unfamiliar meanings." Prucher said it was exciting to realize how much of the language of science fiction has become part of the mainstream language. "Obvious examples are words related to space exploration, like spaceship," he said. "One of my favorites of these, since it refers not to a technology but to a sensation, is 'space-sick,' which was coined by Hugo Gernsback in 1911 but was not actually experienced by a human until 1961." —John Joseph Adams

Source: Sci-fi Wire

Vermsnote: I'm so buying this!

A pair of Stargate SG-1 stories

A third Stargate series?

Robert C. Cooper, executive producer of SCI FI Channel's Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, confirmed to SCI FI Wire that he's developing a third series with the working title Stargate Universe, but remained mum on details. (The project has not yet been picked up by any network, including SCI FI Channel.) "It's being developed," Cooper said in an interview on the Vancouver, Canada, set of the two series. "Not a lot to say at the moment, other than it's ... not the characters from SG-1 or Atlantis. It's a completely third entity. The third series is born of the mythology that's been established." SG-1 will draw to a close after 10 seasons with the episode titled "Unending," airing June 22. Atlantis is currently finishing up its third season and will return with a fourth season later this year. Cooper added that the proposed third series will take place in the present day. "One thing that we think contributes to the success of [all of] the series and the concept behind the series is that it takes place in the here and now. ... It's about us and our age of people dealing with fantastic things, like Stargates and wormholes and aliens. And then there's an identifiable quality to the people in the show. It's not like an antiseptic version of humanity sometime 500 years in the future. [SG-1's] Jack O'Neill [Richard Dean Anderson] was a guy who everybody could relate to, and his reactions to the more fantastic elements of the series were the reactions the average Joe on the street might have." SG-1 and Atlantis executive producer Paul Mullie added: "It's all top secret." Either that, added fellow executive producer Joseph Mallozzi, or "it just hasn't been written yet. I'm not sure which." —Melissa J. Perenson

Source: Sci-fi Wire

Stargate SG-1 direct to DVD movies

Robert C. Cooper, executive producer of SCI FI Channel's original series Stargate SG-1, told SCI FI Wire that the franchise's saga ends and begins anew in the upcoming direct-to-DVD movies Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum. The Ark of Truth will wrap up the arc begun in the show's ninth season, which introduced the Ori and their crusade to conquer the galaxy, Cooper said in an interview on SG-1's set in Vancouver, Canada, last week. SG-1 wraps up its 10th and last season on SCI FI on June 22, and some of the story arcs will remain open-ended. "The idea for the first movie [The Ark of Truth] was going to be [the] cliffhanger ending to season 10 and the start of an arc that would have lasted most of season 11, if season 11 had been picked up," Cooper said. "But that didn't happen, and we revised that concept and turned it into the story for the first movie." The second movie, Continuum, will be a stand-alone story conceived by Cooper's fellow executive producer Brad Wright. Wright, who co-created SG-1, leveraged the show's ties with the military for Continuum. "In some respects, Brad's idea evolved out of the fact that the Navy had come to us and said, 'If you ever want to shoot in the Arctic, we'd love to take you up there,'" Cooper said. "'We have a couple of nuclear submarines you could shoot on.' So Brad said, 'Wow, I'm just going to write a movie around that.' We were the first production ever to shoot that far north. It was a pretty cool experience for everyone that went." Cooper paused, then added: "A very cold experience." Stargate SG-1's warm relationship with the U.S. military began in season one, when the producers needed permission to use stock shots of the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, which is the home of Stargate Command in the show's fictional universe. Eventually, the military vetted scripts for accuracy, and two chiefs of staff had cameo roles as themselves. "As things progressed, we started to say, 'Hey, send us up a C-130 or a couple of F-18s,'" Cooper said. "There are two F-15s that are parked out at Vancouver airport now that we're shooting in [for Continuum]." Fans mourning the loss of SG-1 after this season can take comfort that the franchise will live on in other ways. "SG-1 ran for 10 successful seasons," Cooper said. "We've ended that run on SCI FI, and now we're continuing the story with those characters. Our DVD packages sell so well that, if the movies sell as well as the series sells, it's going to be a tremendous success. And MGM [which produces the series] will eagerly want more." —Melissa J. Perenson

Source: Sci-fi Wire