I got the chance to interview Arkansas Dave himself, Christian Slater, for TV Squad late last week. The Heathers star is back on TV with a new show, The Forgotten, and he seemed genuinely excited to talk about it — and little else. Check out the interview.

Bald and badass — is there a better way to describe Bruce Willis? Well, yeah, probably, but that’s about as deep as I went with my most recent SciFi Squad list, The Top 5 Sci-Fi Heroes Played by Bruce Willis. I caught ol’ Bruno’s latest flick, Surrogates, this weekend. It turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be — a fun and clunky mess full of big sci-fi ideas and clumsy action sequences. But the flick looked great, and Bruce brought his A game as a detective forced to face the real world without the help of his robot avatar.

Check out my list and recall some of Bruce’s better sci-fi roles.

I really grew to love Syfy’s Warehouse 13 halfway through its first season. How can you not love a show about two secret service agents tracking down stuff like Edgar Allen Poe’s haunted pen or Timothy Leary’s super psychedelic glasses? Check out my review of the show’s season finale at TV Squad. Here’s an excerpt:

It took a while, but Warehouse 13 finally broke away from the stale case-of-the-week episodes (and the stale dialogue) to become the summer’s most amusing slice of sci-fi TV. The shift happened a few weeks ago when Roger Rees’ smug and sadistic baddie, Macpherson, showed up to make trouble for the team.

Macpherson turned out to be the big bad Warehouse 13 was missing all along. He was an ex-Warehouse agent with a vendetta against Artie and the regents. His evil plots forced Artie and the agents to bond and trust each other, and they also gave the show a real sense of danger and purpose. Oh, and Macpherson also gave us Claudia and Leena, apparently.

Macpherson returned to twist the knife one more time in a season finale packed with surprises, red herrings, and a few insane artifacts (Timothy Leary’s psychedelic glasses? That was a good one.)

Update: Little John Worf here made Topless Robot’s “What you call the best of the best” post. I lvoe it!

Indeed. Click here for an explanation. I’m thinking of coming up with a whole line of ST:TNG-related “Whose Responsible This?” classics. Because I can.

Just started watching The Guild, Felicia Day’s Web series about a group of gamers with severe emotional issues. People (and by people, I mean the Internet) have been telling me about this awesome show since it started streaming back in 2007. Tonight I finally watched my first batch of eps on the Youtubes and now I’m hooked. I probably don’t have to tell most of you that this thing is just as funny as Dr. Horrible and its got a great cast; the rumor is Wil Wheaton will show up next season.

Yes, this is a show for nerds, as the casts’ new hugely popular music video reminds us. Check it out online, on Xbox Live, on DVD, and, er, yes, those places.

(Just watched District 9 less than half an hour ago. Felt compelled to share my non-spoilery thoughts.)

District 9 is easily the most fascinating, original, gripping, and arresting film to hit the mulitplex this summer. It’s also an amazing technical feat, seemlessly blending some of the most realistic-looking CGI I’ve ever seen with faux documentary footage, surveilance videos, and more traditional scenes filmed in Johannesburg, South Africa. Director Neill Blomkamp pulls perfect and shockingly realistic performances from all of his actors, especially Sharlto Copley, who transforms from a friendly milquetoast middleman into a frothing, vulgar and desperate man on the run.

The film delivers tons of suspsense, big action, countless grisly bloodstained frames, and some mad lab horror, but none of the thrills feel empty. Blomkamp grounds District 9 in the real world with an urgent documentary style and visual references to apartheid and the world’s history of racial segregation and oppression. It’s this dark and dirty realism that sets the film apart from other recent sci-fi blockbusters, but it might leave some audience members feeling like the movie is missing something. The film features some Hollywood plot conventions, but there’s no likable hero or traditional structure here, and calling the pace frenetic would be an understatement. But if viewed on it own terms, District 9 is one hell of a captivating ride that manages to break new ground while borrowing ideas and concepts from some of Hollywood’s greatest sci-fi flicks.

I know vacations are supposed to be relaxing, but I returned from our trip to Arizona spent and bleary-eyed thanks to 4 million hours of driving and Grand Canyon hiking. I’ve been moving slow on the writing front since we got back, but I’ve managed to toss a few opinions out into the Internet ether this week. Here are the highlights:

Browncoats, Slayers and Dolls unite: WhedonFest ‘09 kicks off Friday – Hundreds of Joss Whedon fans are expected to take over the small town of LaVergne, TN this weekend for WhedonFest 2009, a celebration of all things Joss Whedon.

New Sci-Fi on DVD: Mutants, Machine Girls and Alchemists - I saw director Simon Hunter’s gory steampunk-inspired thriller at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con. The most memorable thing about the screening was watching stars Ron Perlman and Thomas Jane ham it up for the fans. The movie wasn’t so memorable is what I’m sayin’.

Adam West returns to the Batman franchise – I’m sure some of you would like to forget about the campy ’60s Batman TV show starring Adam West and Burt Ward as corny comic book crime fighters. Me? I love it.

… So what if I didn’t do it in person but in a blog post about his upcoming Star Wars TV show? You wanna make a thing of it?

I used my first TV Geek Week column over at SciFi Squad to express my pre-hate for Lucas’ new project. I showed some lazy love for Warehouse 13 and Eureka in my second column. What am I writing about next week? I’m thinking Torchwood.

The print you see above has officially become my permanent computer desktop (permanent for the next few weeks, anyway). I love the film it’s based on, Luc Besson’s The Professional, aka Natalie Portman’s finest hour, and the thing just looks so damn striking. The artist’s name is Jeff Boye. The print was part of the Gallery1998’s Crazy4Cult3D art show. Visit /Film to ogle a larger version.

I was twelve years old and I couldn’t contain my excitement. I was in line to watch Captain EO, Disneyland’s 3-D sci-fi flick starring Michal Jackson and a whole buncha alien muppets. I loved it. It was way cooler than the Star Wars “ride” (but not as cool as Space Mountain). I don’t really remember the film’s plot (there was a princess or something, right?) or the songs, but I remember the thrill of watching Jackson pilot his space shuttle around Francis Ford Coppola’s strange 3-D universe.

I mentioned Captain EO in a recent post for SciFi Squad, in which I pointed readers to links about Jackson’s love for sci-fi and comics. Check out the post to see a trailer for the movie plus the video for MJ’s awesome sci-fi-influenced video for “Scream.”