JJ Abrams, mastermind of the WB classic “Felicity,” is officially on board for the next Star Trek movie as director, and Paramount has announced that it will shoot this fall for a Christmas Day 2008 release. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Alias, The Island, Transformers) will write the screenplay. You can see the full press release here.

So thats the official line. What of the rumor mill? Cinematical has some reports on casting that sound kind of… suspect. When the word first went around of a series reboot, we heard stuff like Kirk & Spock in the Academy and young Star Trek. A prequel, like Muppet Babies. Now some names are flying around and depending on who you ask, they’re close to signing or already cast. But some of these actors are a bit older, so maybe the prequel thing is out the window. So who is who?

• Matt Damon as James T Kirk. I just watched The Departed last night looking for Kirk and I think he can do it. Damon is one of the best, and the only thing he’ll do that Shatner didn’t is give a performance without camp.
• Adrien Brody as Mister Spock. Another great actor, an Academy Award winner at that. The hardest part about Vulcans is taking them seriously with those ears, especially for someone so well known already.
• Danel Dae Kim as Hikaru Sulu. He’s best known as Jin Kwon on LOST, but also has some experience on Trek. He played Corporal Chang in 3 episodes of Enterprise!
• Gary Sinise as Dr Leonard McCoy. I can think of few others more suited toward the role as the incredulous ship’s doctor. He comes on board much older than the rest of the crew, and certainly older than Deforest Kelly in the original series.

It remains to be seen how this will pan out, but Star Trek definitely needs some help now or this franchise will die.

GameTrailers recently had a user movie contest and this gem was the clear winner.

Lets start this off with some good news on a freebie: Game|Life reports that the first ever release of a high-definition episode of South Park will hit Xbox Live Marketplace. Starting Tuesday March 6, the Season 8 classic “Good Times With Weapons” will be available to Gold members for no cost for 2 weeks. Those without Xbox 360 or Live can still get the episode: On March 20 Best Buy is giving an HD-DVD for free with the purchase of any Xbox HD DVD player or a 360.

Personally, I grabbed Alien Hominid and Ms Pac-Man on Live Arcade this week. Alien Hominid is about the hardest game I’ve ever played on XBLA, and includes a boss event I cannot pass because I have no idea what to shoot. Ms Pac-Man I cleared all 200 Achievement points in under 2 hours. Go figure. Worms HD finally drops next week for another 800 points ($10), but I’ll pass until I actually finish Alien Hominid.

Tekken finally made it to the North American Playstation Network. Which is pretty good if you have a 1080p TV, don’t own the PS2 or the PSP versions. Nah, its budget priced and worth your dollar to get it in the prettiest format available. I understand you can buy Jin a new hat in this one. The much hyped Warhawk sequel from Sony has been downgraded from a full game to a Multiplayer-only download title. Well at least they won’t charge you an arm and a leg for it now.

The best game on the download circuit this week has to go to the best game ever made, The Legend Of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Nearly a decade after release, its still got the highest rating of any game released before or since. $10 is a hefty sum on Wii‘s Virtual Console, but considering how vast the game is, its a bargain. Nintendo obviously knows how awesome this is, as its been released on the GameCube twice, but if you missed those or (god forbid) the N64 original, now is the time.

Newsarama has an interview up with Marvel’s Mark Millar addressing questions about the recent event Civil War. Toward the end of the interview he unloaded quite a shock…

NRAMA: Finally, before we let you go, what is interesting you/what are you working on outside the realm of comic book publishing?

MM: Like all my pals, the TV and movie people have come calling and even the computer game people (which is weird because games are for pedos and I have no interest).

Uh, what the hell is that supposed to mean, Mark? Are you a little bitter that video games have taken such a massive chunk of revenue out of your target audience?
If he dislikes games thats one thing, but this is kind of insane and I hope he didn’t mean that.

Death is but a doorway, time is but a window.

Witness some of the most violent and gruesome deaths the 8-bit world had to offer.

I’ve never considered myself a Trekkie, only because a Trekkie would chuckle at my lack of basic knowledge of Starfleet. I am a casual fan though, and so I’m able to quite enjoy former Star Trek: The Next Generation star Wil Wheaton’s look back at the show.

Wheaton’s talks enthusiastically about his part on the show as an actor and also as a fan of Star Trek. He’s also pretty frank about being disliked by Trekkies, and slyly points out how corny the macguffins in the ST:TNG were.

Read on for Wil’s thoughts on Fairpoint, Ferengi, and sexy time on the Tsiolkovsky.

Splinter taught them to be Ninja Teens, Ubisoft turned them into a Prince of Persia knock-off.
Nah, I’m not going to slam this completely, because the ninja action combined with some wall jumping looks totally natural for this franchise, especially given what we’ve seen from the two trailers. Ubisoft couldn’t do worse than Konami, who turned in from pretty forgettable PS2 games based on the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle animated series.

But if new games don’t float your boat, how about an olde one? 360 Style got a hold of some screen shots of the original 1989 TMNT game for Xbox Live Arcade thats floating around on Partnernet(a developer only version of Xbox Live). It looks legit, and if there is 4-player online co-op I’ll fork over whatever asking price they have. A fairly straight forward button masher, I have to wonder what will be used for achievements…

Finally, the ESRB has rated the original NES game for play on the Wii Virtual Console.

Update: InsideGamer.nl has video of the Xbox Live game in action!

Toys based on video games is still a woefully untapped and underserved market. Even massively popular lines like Halo 2 from Joyride don’t make it much further than stores that sell video games (even Toys R Us stocked them near the Xbox games).

Metal Gear Solid 4 may not have a release date, but the 12″ Solid Snake (picutred) will be out in November. He’s pretty detailed, and employs some advanced action figure technology to keep his body in realistic posts, which sounds nice but its really a shady way of saying he’s not getting double jointed limbs. Couldn’t find a price point, and Medicom is a Japanese toy company so be prepared to pay brutal import prices.

NECA has a handful of figures already out based on Eidos properties: Tomb Raider Legend, Hitman, and Legacy of Kain. They also announced at Toy Fair they’ll have some Resident Evil figures out by September, and Castlevania in October. Simon Belmont will be based on the NES box art, but Alucard, Dracula, and Succubus will be styled after Symphony Of The Night.

First 4 Figures has a Metroid license, but seem intent on making statues too expensive to buy on a whim. Zero Suit Samus will retail for $109. An excellent likeness, and sure to be the pride of your basement collection. They’re also stamping out Zelda statues. Why not make me a proper 6″ Varia Suit Samus Aran action figure and some Space Pirates, F4F?

SOTA Toys will have some Darkstalkers to add to their Street Fighter line. Dimitri and Lord Raptor will be out late spring 2007.

Its really frustrating that theres still no line that conforms to a scale and offers more than the most obvious characters as figures. Getting ONLY Snake or ONLY Lara Croft seems odd. Even Mario brought some supporting characters to Happy meals.