Dollhouse will star Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and FOX has apparently guaranteed Whedon seven episodes. Of course, we’ve all been burnt by FOX before, many times over, so it’s probably not a good idea to hope for much. But seven hours of Whedon (4.5 after commercials) is a nice treat in and of itself, so I’ll take what I can get. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky this time.

According to Wikipedia: “In Dollhouse, Dushku plays a young woman named Echo, a member of a group of people known as ‘Actives’ or ‘Dolls’ who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments. They’re then hired out for particular jobs, crimes, fantasies, and occasional good deeds. In between tasks, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state and live in a futuristic dormitory/laboratory, a hidden facility nicknamed ‘The Dollhouse’. The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.”

Also on board for the cast so far are Amy Acker (Fred/Illyria from Angel) and Tahmoh Penikett (Helo from Battlestar Galactica).

Don’t know about you, but I’m sold. Is it January yet?

EDITED TO ADD: Here’s the first publicity still …

See More Dollhouse Publicity Stills at IGN.com
Photo Credit: FOX

“That is, in fact, a giant Godzilla woman wreaking havoc on your minions.” - Buffy to Toru

This issue is brutal on the first page, brutal on the last page, and brutal right in the middle. Granted, the brutality in the middle is aimed at a soul-less vampire who was about to kill what he believes to be a helpless school girl, but still … the cold ease with which the Scoobies dispose of the “Vamp in the Box” shows us that they understand just how serious things are. As Buffy herself says in the lead-in to the next scene, “This is war.” The stakes of which are the powers of every Slayer, and consequently, the power those Slayers need to fight the forces of Twilight.

The death of Aiko last issue was brutal enough. But finding her body strapped to the side of a building, her blood used as ink, seems especially so. You can almost see another little piece of Buffy’s soul drain out of her as she carries Aiko’s body to the temple. With each issue, she becomes more the leader, more the general — and by necessity, less the carefree Slayer we once knew. And in that light, perhaps her fling with Satsu makes a certain kind of sense. Satsu is the younger version of herself that she can’t be any more. New Buffy cannot afford to be intimate with Old Buffy, and so chooses instead to be intimate with a proxy. A proxy she wants to protect, to keep innocent … but who, like her, is too strong-willed to do as she’s told.

Stepping away from brutality for a moment, how awesome is that Dawnzilla scene? It’s a nice payoff to an ongoing plot point that’s had everybody scratching their head for the past year or so. I especially enjoy the moment when Dawn truly embraces her “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman”-ness, lets out with a giant ROAR, and starts smashing buildings. There’s a metaphor in that — the teenager who is perhaps the tallest or heaviest girl in her class, who suddenly recognizes her inner strength, her inner Helen Reddy, and sings out, “I am woman, hear me ROAR!”

In fact, if you haven’t lately, go read the lyrics to that song — “I Am Woman” — because I’m convinced that it’s heavily informing the story right now. Not only for Dawn, but for her big sister as well, and for all of the Slayers. Having found their power (via the Scythe), these girls are not willing to lose it. “I’ve been down there on the floor/No one’s ever gonna keep me down again.” And for Buffy, how appropriate is, “Oh yes I am wise/But it’s wisdom born of pain.” More and more, I can see that Goddard’s “Wolves at the Gate” plot arc is a bit of a feminist anthem … you know, even moreso than the series in general tends to be.

All the more horrifying then is the final scene. Renee impaled on the same Scythe that originally gave her her power. Renee, who embodied that power as much as anybody, unafraid to take the lead in her relationship with Xander just a handful of pages earlier. And poor Xander. As with Buffy at the start of this issue, and as with Willow when Tara was killed, we know what this will do to him — sap away a bit of his soul, and make him colder, more deadly, and less the Xander we used to know. Dark Xander, anyone?

Looking ahead, the next issue wraps up Goddard’s 4-parter. After that, Joss himself takes the reins again, for a 4-parter entitled “Time of Your Life” in issues 16-19. Without spoiling too much, all I have to say is one word. (Highlight text to read this spoiler.) Actually, a name. It begins with F, ends with Y, and rhymes with “tray”. Okay, screw it, it’s Fray, the Future Slayer! So if you haven’t read that trade paperback yet, run, don’t walk, to buy it today. And if you have already, then it might be time to read it again to prepare yourself. Karl Moline & Andy Owens will be back as the artists, and there’s a great interview with Moline over on CBR …

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=13036

In fact, if you’d like to see a preview of the first few pages of Issue 16 (courtesy of MySpace Comic Books), click the following link. It doesn’t spoil anything more than I’ve already told you.

http://www.gagglefrak.com/images/BuffyS8_16pvw/

In every group of friends, there’s inevitably an asshole that the rest of the friends only tolerate. (According to Dane Cook, if you have to ask who it is in your group, then odds are, it’s YOU.) Well the same is true in the world of comic books and superheroes, and Cracked.com has compiled a hilarious list of the worst offenders …

The 6 Creepiest Comic Book Characters of All Time

In other words, you’re looking at the father of the Cylons.

Hop over to Wikipedia for more detailed info about the new series.

Roslin hears a fellow cancer patient (Nana Visitor of Deep Space Nine) recount a dream about crossing “The River” into the land of the dead. It’s all very Charon & the River Styx. Anyway, this metaphorical dream seems to be the result of listening to one too many Gaius Christ sermons … and it’s apparently contagious. By the end of the episode, Roslin herself is having the same dream, and the implication is that she’s starting to buy into Baltar’s “One God” brand of spirituality. And after she talks to Adama, we get the impression he might be too.

Meanwhile, over on the Demetrius, Starbuck narrowly averts a mutiny, but only after Anders shoots Gaeta in the leg. This buys Starbuck the time needed to talk Helo into letting her take a Raptor (and his girlfriend) to Leobon’s jump coordinates. Helo gives Starbuck 15 hours. She, Anders, Leobon, Athena, and some Red Shirt all make the leap, and sure enough, arrive at the site of the Cylon massacre. What’s more, Starbuck sees the Basestar, shooting around a planet like a comet … which is exactly what she has spent weeks painting on the wall of her cabin.

On the Basestar, Athena’s fellow Eights express to her that they’ve lost faith in the Sixes, and she scolds them about picking a side and sticking with it. One of the blonde Sixes remembers that the Red Shirt killed her in a past life, and returns the favor. Things get tense, and one of the less-blonde Sixes takes control of the situation, killing (after kissing) the blonde Six herself before things can escalate further. And Starbuck meets The Hybrid, who slowly and randomly dispenses the following bits of wisdom …

“The children of the one reborn shall find their own country.” (Who is this? Starbuck?)

“The obstinate toy soldier becomes pliant.” (Adama?)

“You are a spark of God’s fire.” (Similar to what Leobon said last week.)

“Thus will it come to pass, a dying leader will know the truth of the opera house.” (Clearly Roslin.)

“You are the harbinger of Death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.” (This is what the hybrid in Razor also told Starbuck.)

“The missing three will give you the five, who have come from the home of the thirteenth.” This is of course the key bit of wisdom, and the writers don’t leave to us to interpret. D’Anna (Number Three) needs to be unboxed, so she can reveal who the Final Five are, because they’ll know where to find the Thirteenth Tribe (Earth). What’s interesting about this is that I’m pretty sure we’ve never had it confirmed or even suggested that the Final Five came from Earth. Although it’s certainly consistent with them knowing the words to “All Along the Watchtower”.

Okay, so back to my original point. Roslin is previewing through dreams the journey “across the river” from life to death, where her friends and family await her on the other side, and this is a spiritual act for her. Starbuck is likewise trusting Leobon’s spiritual entreaties to make a jump across the galaxy to a point in space that she has previewed in her paintings. Once there, she meets the “left for dead” Cylons and brings them back with her. And her reason for doing this is that several months before, she somehow jumped all the way to Earth and returned, and she’s been using some subconscious knowledge of where the prophesied Promised Land of Earth is to try and lead the fleet there

So there’s all this jumping and crossing going on, and it’s all very spiritual, and it all involves death and the nearly dead and the living trying to avoid being dead, and the solution is always somewhere “over there,” somewhere that can’t be seen from here, somewhere we have to trust is there or we’ll never try to find it. In other words, leaps of FAITH. So maybe the episode is aptly titled after all.

Reprinted from Too Much Free Time (head over there to comment)

Okay, now check out the cool thing …

Video provided courtesy of Marvel.com

The book is written so that it reads as if it were a non-fiction history book from the future about a pandemic that has already occurred some years before, complete with realistic photos, tables, and graphs. It combines written history — names, dates, events, etc. — with oral accounts of people who survived the 2012 tragedy, and the “heroes” of the story are average people like you and me, doing the best they can in a terrible situation.

This story-telling technique is similar to that used by one of my favorite novels from 2006, Max Brooks’ World War Z, which assumes the pretense that a zombie epidemic has occurred many years before the writing of the book. So if you liked that one, odds are, you’ll like this one too.

For much more information about the book, about the author, to read some sample chapters, and for ordering information, just visit www.pandemicbook.com.

Apparently, the past isn’t all that important. It’s all about the future, baby! At least, that’s what I took away from this week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica.

For instance, Gaius Christ is helping his followers dismiss the past by convincing them that the twelve gods of the colonies that everybody’s been praying to for thousands of years never really existed. What’s more, worshiping the wrong god can lead to bad things happening — you know, like Cylons killing your entire family. (”And the correct answer was … Mooormon. Mormon. Everyone else goes to Hell. Sorry.” - South Park) But if you worship Baltar’s One True God, who as we learned last week loves you because you’re perfect, then all will be well. Be sure to grab yourself a complimentary cup of Kool-Aid on the way out, courtesy of God.

Increasingly creepy Tory has mastered the art of Baltar-speak at this point, and uses it expertly to deflect Tyrol from questioning the exact nature of Callie’s death. “Maybe it was God’s will. We don’t know why these things happen. But God does. He has a plan for us.” She also seems to have bought into Baltar’s wonderful philosophy of complete non-accountability. “Whatever has gone before, whatever I have done, it doesn’t matter.” But while I half-believe that poor deluded Baltar preaches such a concept with some sincerity, I’m not so sure about Tory. You may not have noticed, but she kind of lies a lot. And this makes me wonder if she has an agenda that the rest of the Semi-Final Four aren’t aware of.

In spite of Tory’s motivational speech, Tyrol decides that he can’t live with his past, and goes so far as to shave his head and put a gun to it. He must be working through the stages of grief, because he seems to miss Callie now, after hating the memory of her last week, and he’s pushing hard against his Cylon nature. Regardless, his Private Pyle moment passes (Full Metal Jacket? anybody?), he doesn’t kill himself, and Baltar visits him to say, “Blah blah blah, I was once a man of science. Blah blah blah, I have committed terrible crimes. Blah blah blah, fate and redemption. Blah blah blah, let’s hold hands and sing Kum Ba Yah.” And they do. And Baltar has another Cylon convert under his belt.

Meanwhile, on the Demetrius, just as time is running out for Starbuck, she conveniently runs across Leobon, who is fleeing the recent Cylon Civil War massacre. He tells her that the Hybrid back on the Base Star also knows about Earth, and convinces Starbuck and Anders to jump to the site of the massacre to learn more. But when something goes wrong, Leobon starts working from last week’s script. Starbuck tenderizes his face and he begs for more, the way Tigh did as Six smacked him around. Then Leobon remembers which week it is, and tells Starbuck that her past life of drinking, frakking, and fighting are now irrelevant. “You have to make peace with your past. Because that part of you is gone.” She is now apparently “an angel, blazing with the light of God. An angel, eager to lead her people home.” So … she’s got that going for her.

Unfortunately, what she does NOT have going for her is the support of her crew. Mutiny, anyone?

TO BE CONTINUED

Reprinted from Too Much Free Time (head over there to comment)

(The following review is all qualitative, and does NOT contain any spoilers.)

First of all, I’ll say it, even though you’ve already heard it from a thousand other people. This movie is what it is because of the performance put in by leading man Robert Downey Jr. Which was only possible because of director Jon Favreau’s good sense to not only cast RDJ in this role, but then to get out of his way. As I heard Favreau express in an interview yesterday, this philosophy is at the core of his movie making style, and it served him well both with Vince Vaughn in Swingers and Will Ferrell in Elf. Like a good coach, you need to build a team with strong players, point them in the right direction, then let them do what they do best.

Rewinding a bit, I should point out that going into this movie, I wasn’t really a die hard Iron Man fan. In fact, my list of favorite core characters from the Marvel Universe probably goes something like this: Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Avengers, Iron Man, Daredevil, Thor, and whoever else. I’ve acquired a better appreciation for the character over the past couple of years, thanks in part to the “Civil War” story line. But I can probably count the number of actual “Iron Man” comics I’ve bought over the years on one hand.

So Friday, I went into the theater thinking that Sam Raimi’s first and second Spider-Man movies are about as good as you can get, knowing that I’d probably like this latest superhero flick simply because I’ve enjoyed Favreau’s and RDJ’s previous work, and because I have a high tolerance for comic book movies. Instead, I walked out of the theater an Iron Man fan. I’m still not sure if I liked this movie better than the Spider-Man flicks — and really, I’m not going to make myself decide — but I certainly liked it just as much, and suspect that as with Spider-Man, I’ll probably like the inevitable sequel even better.

Critical to the appeal of the Tony Stark character in this movie for me wasn’t his playboy persona — which certainly yields plenty of laughs — but rather the more reclusive Howard Hughes aspect. As portrayed here, Stark is a genius who mostly lives inside his head, and only comes out now and then to play with others. He easily has enough money to be surrounded at all times in his workshop by well-educated assistants who could do all his dirty work for him, but instead, he surrounds himself with a “staff” of robotic arms on wheels that (mostly) do exactly what he tells them to do. The world perceives him to be a weapons manufacturer, but as portrayed by RDJ in the many workshop scenes, we see an eccentric artist whose clay happens to be electronics and alloys, and it’s an exciting process to watch.

Equally critical is the convincing evolution of Tony Stark from douchebag to superhero in the span of just two hours. Favreau sticks very close to the traditional origin story for Iron Man, so anybody even vaguely familiar with the character knows exactly WHAT is going to happen. “Shallow wealthy industrialist gets captured, builds a suit of armor to escape, uses that armor to become a superhero. The end.” But it’s one thing to start with that premise and another thing entirely to sell it as it’s happening, and to make the audience care even though they already know where the story’s going. And this movie sells it, thanks both to RDJ’s range as an actor and Favreau’s uncanny knack for knowing which scenes should be funny, which should be sad, which should make your heart race, and which order those scenes should be in. It might sound like this is Film Making 101 … but we’ve all seen enough crappy superhero movies at this point to know — it’s not as easy as it sounds.

As for the special effects, do I even need to tell you? Presumably, you’ve seen either the trailers or the cell phone commercials (and don’t get me started on the Burger King tie-in), and as good as those look, the movie itself looks ten times better. Favreau went right to the kings, LucasFilm’s Industrial Light & Magic, the pros behind last summer’s big hit, Transformers. The result is that there really are no “special effects” in this movie — just one scene after another of amazing things that look and sound real. To some extent, it’s probably easier to create this illusion for a hero like Iron Man, who is inherently artificial, than it is for a spandex-wearing hero like Spider-Man who, if you don’t get it just right, can come off looking a bit rubbery. Regardless, the effects here were spot-on.

Have I gushed enough yet? Seriously, go see Iron Man. Even Gwyneth Paltrow is good in it! And Jeff Bridges’ performance as Obadiah Stane is the cherry on top. And if you’re a comics fan at all, be sure to stay through the credits — there’s a cool little treat at the end there. And if you don’t understand why it’s cool, just come back and ask, and I’ll tell you.

Well, between now and May 13th, to celebrate the pending release of Invincible, the final chapter in the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force series, Random House and Del Rey are letting the general public download a FREE audio or digital version of Betrayal, the first book in the series.

CLICK FOR MORE DETAILS

Spanning 9 volumes, the Legacy of the Force series deals with events that occur in the Star Wars universe starting roughly 40 years after the original trilogy of movies (Episodes 4-6). Luke, Han, and Leia are back, but much older now, and they all have kids. And one of this new generation has not quite lived up to the standards established by his/her parents. Yes, you guessed it — somebody gets seduced by the Dark Side. And yes there’s a war. And yes … there is a Big Bad Sith Villain behind that war, a student of Darth Vader, who needs to be taken down.

I haven’t read the series myself, but it sounds like great fun, and each of the books have received excellent reviews. So I’ve already downloaded the audio version, and I’ll be adding it to my iPod this weekend. Remember, the offer ends May 13th, so if you’re going to download it, do it soon. Here’s the link again …

http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/starwars/sw_legacy.html