TrekMove.com, a site I can only assume was founded to unearth information about the still hazy JJ Abrams movie, has some news on a possible new animated (!) internet(!!) series.

Under the headline “CBS Considering New Animated Trek Series For The Web” Trek Movie reports:

The idea for a new animated Trek started back around the time that Star Trek Enterprise was cancelled. David Rossi and his partners didn’t buy into the notion that Star Trek ‘needed a rest’. “We wanted to spark a little life into Star Trek and to keep it alive in people’s eyes,” explains Rossi. They knew CBS and Paramount weren’t going to be keen on a new (and very expensive) live action show so they decided that animation was the way to go. Their first notion was to do a show set in the Original Series era (but not on the Enterprise), however that notion didn’t sit well with the people at CBS. Rossi then took the advice he got from LeVar Burton on how ‘Star Trek should always be about moving forward and what is next in the human adventure.’ So the team came up with the notion of taking a big leap forward and setting a show 150 years after the time of Picard and Star Trek Nemesis, but in a very different and somewhat dark Trek universe. CBS were more open to that idea and over the last year and a half have asked the team (now formed into Zero Room Productions) to flesh out their idea. Although CBS have not committed to the series, they have asked the team to develop test artwork and scripts for 5 mini episodes.

I always liked LeVar Burton.

No more prequels, no ancient history, no revamps. Taking a big leap into a “Next Next Generation” will give them lots of room to play around while not abandoning the races and planets we know.

So I’m firmly in the camp that loves the concept. Why am I nervous? Because they’re going for “mini-episodes” meaning all stories will have to be low character development but high action. This is not Trek’s strong point. At the risk of comparing to Star Wars (cue groaning), All the characters there were defined by actions and broad dialog, where as I didn’t feel like I knew a character like Picard until the show had been on for years, and they still managed to surprise me for years afterwards. Star Trek may be overshadowed by Battlestar, Stargate, and other sci-fi series these days, but lets not forget that the character based sci-fi drama began with Trek and its only fair that Trek come back to reclaim it. I don’t think they’ll do it with cartoons for the YouTube audience.

Best case scenario: The ‘toons take off and a real new series is developed to flesh out the new timeline. Worst Case scenario: we’re pretty much already living it, so we’ve got nothing to lose.

Thanks Shiv’Kala

Thanks to TFormers, we’ve got a very detailed look at a design sheet drawing for Ratchet in the Transformers 2007 movie.

Ratchet from the original Transformers series was the Autobot’s chief medical officer, and transformed into an ambulance. While he might’ve been the obvious choice to peg as the pacifist, he frequently found himself in the heat of some of the most memorable battles in Transformers fiction, including being trapped on the Ark with Megatron, Starscream, Shockwave, and Galvatron from the future.

In the 2007 Transformer movie from director Michael Bay, Ratchet is loaded up as a modified Humvee built for search and resuce. This makes him one of the larger Autobots on the team. His robot mode has been surprisingly unseen in the rash of leaked design sheets, but now we have a sneak peek…

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After watching, be sure to read beyond the jump for the lengthy show notes!

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‘Starfox Command’ is Nintendo’s fifth Starfox game (if you count ‘Starfox Adventures’) and their first Starfox game for the DS. I’ve been a long time ‘Starfox’ fan, ever since the original was released back in 1993 (wow, it’s been 13 years already?). I’ve always been a fan of non-simulation shooters and since I’ve been craving a new game for my DS, so ‘Starfox Command’ was an instant buy for me. I jumped on this title the day it was released, but was I too quick to throw my thirty bucks at it so eagerly?

Starting Out:
The game starts out just as you’d expect, you’ve got your basic start menu for single-player, download play (multiplayer modes which I’ll cover later in the review), wi-fi play (again, I’ll cover later) and your options menu, all complete with dramatic Starfox music! You’ll probably want to hit up the options menu first, considering that the game starts out with non-inverted controls and if you’re anything like me, you’d normally expect them inverted in a flight game. You can also adjust your sound settings with the ability to change the characters voices. You have “normal”, “recorded” and “machine”. Normal goes back to the classic “Starfox” sounding voices, if you never played the original, they’re basically the same gibberish, “Microsoft Sam” sounding voices like in ‘Animal Crossing’. “Recorded” is actually really cool because it asks you a bunch of questions, getting a range of sound from your own voice and cutting it up and mixing your phrases into fake words, giving the characters the tone of your or a friend’s voice. “Machine” is just the old-school beeps and bloops during text. Also in the options menu, you can set up your nickname for Multiplayer and Wi-Fi modes.
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Ok fans, get comfortable because there are a LOT of updates in this one. Instead of the usual breaking up the updates by company, this time around I’m going to break it up by properties (ie. Transformers, Marvel Superheroes, Star Trek, etc)

To view all the updates, continue on after the jump. Please note that I will be updating this constantly for a while until I feel I got everything I needed to.

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I will be updating this post throughout the day with news and announcements as I find them. I will include coverage of last night’s previews as well.

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Richard Linklater’s film adaptation of the story by Phillip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly is the semi-Autobiographical story of Dick’s own battles with substance abuse and his perceived course of the drug war.

Published in 1977, his bleak outlook gave us only 7 years until everything we say and do is monitored. Obviously, the current world climate nearly 30 years later is coming closer to that becoming a reality than ever.

Keanu Reeves plays the role of Robert Arctor, an undercover narcotics agent who has to ingest dangerous amounts of the drug he’s trying to get off the streets in order to maintain his cover. The drug “Substance D” causes brain damage and combining that with his already split identity causes Arctor to slowly lose grip on reality. Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder, and Rory Cochrane round out the cast as Reeve’s perpetually stoned friends.

Linklater took great care with the visual style of this movie, using a rotoscoping technique where actors are filmed and then had animation cells and computer effects painted over the original film. While the film rarely takes upon any action that one might associate with producing a feature in such a manner, the story calls for some events and visuals where the medium is pitch perfect.
With Total Recall, Blade Runner, and Minority Report already successful adaptations of Phillip K Dick stories, this one is much more subdued, a lot less action packed, more paranoid, and as a result, more faithful to the source material.

The score by the Golden Arm Trio with songs by Radiohead and Thom Yorke assists the ambiance of a “world getting progressively worse.”

Some may be turned off by the film’s lack of motion. Its also hurts that a so clearly science-fiction concept in its time resembles life today so closely. Had the film been made 10, 20 years ago in the same way, it would’ve seemed revolutionary and controversial. But its concepts are so accepted as fact or eventualities that it becomes too easy to pick apart the drama and characters.

But thats OK. Not every head trip movie has to be for every person who liked head trip movies. Certainly Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas was a failure in theatrical release, but a favorite on dvd years later. A Scanner Darkly may take a few years to reach its ultimate audience.

I can say, however, that I enjoyed it.

Trailer: A Scanner Darkly

SyFyPortal shared some comments about Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica made by James Callis, the actor who portrays Dr. Gaius Baltar. From what he says the series will take a darker turn than what we’ve already seen.

“In the upcoming episodes, the simplest way to explain what happens is that the wheat is separated from the chaff,” Callis said in an interview at this month’s Saturn Awards in Universal City, Calif. “I’m not actually sure at this moment which I belong to, which bothers me, whether I’m the wheat or the chaff. All I know is that we are necessarily separated.”

“And the first few scripts of this particular season are phenomenal,” he said, “and far darker and more gritty and more worrying than anything that you have seen before. I really am not just saying that. I remember just reading it going, ‘My God almighty, this is remorseless and relentless.’ And as such should be very gripping television. Even though it’s very, I think, the word is dystopic.”

Read the article for more.